Lorena is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the School of Social Sciences & Global Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at the Open University. She is Co-Director of IKD: Innovation, Knowledge and Development Research Centre. She completed her PhD thesis in Economics at SOAS, University of London (fully funded by SOAS Economics dpt.) with a title ‘A nexus between the role of the state, market transition and food consumption: The case of Uzbekistan’. Lorena holds a MSc from SOAS in Political Economy of Development (fully-funded). She received a previous Masters in Development Economics from University La Sapienza of Rome, Italy.