Susan Johnson is a Senior Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath and Director of the Centre for Development Studies. She has a background in Economics and Agricultural Economics and worked in development organisations for eight years before joining academia. Susan has researched and written extensively in the field of microfinance expanding the analysis in this field to the institutional analysis of local financial markets, in particular examining their social embeddedness. Susan has undertaken extensive research into microfinance and financial access, particularly focussed on its gender dimensions, the role of informal financial services, and the impact of interventions on poverty. She has worked on a number of major impact assessment studies for DFID and the Ford Foundation, and undertaken research on financial access and the evelopment of decentralised financial systems with the Financial Sector Deepening Trust in Kenya.