Hybrid Organizations and the Third Sector : Challenges for Practice, Theory and Policy

DAVID BILLIS is currently Emeritus Reader at the London School of Economics (LSE). In 1978 he founded the world's first university-based research and teaching programme working with voluntary agencies. In 1987 he became founding Director of the Centre for Voluntary Organisation at the LSE (later renamed the Centre for the Civil Society), which built on and incorporated the work of PORTVAC. At the LSE he established two specialist MSc courses for the UK third sector and for NGOs.

He has held senior positions in other leading academic institutions, most recently visiting professor at Imperial College. He has also lectured at many universities around the world and has taught for the United Nations. He co-founded the Journal Nonprofit Management and Leadership and was its first international editor.

He is the only non-American to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement award by ARNOVA, the leading American and international third sector scholarly association.

He has acted as an adviser, and undertaken projects, for government departments both in the UK and abroad. As an international consultant he has worked in more than 50 countries in 5 Continents and his experience covers the full range of organisations from multinationals and large governmental agencies to small voluntary organisations.