Lisa Hanley is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Civil Society Center at Zeppelin University (Germany) where she coordinates the International Research Network on Social Economic Empowerment (IRENE|SEE) funded by Siemens Stiftung. She has worked in the field of international development and urban studies and her current research interests focus on the public-private debate and the role of social enterprises in the delivery of public services, with particular attention to their role in the social economy. She holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. She has been an Associate Researcher at the Center for the Study of the City at FLACSO (Ecuador) and is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Social Science Research fellowship and a Fulbright fellowship.