Alastair White has lived in Cherwell District since 1988, first in Banbury and now in Kidlington, where his children go to the local state school. His interests centre on understanding how people live in different places and how to reduce and eliminate world poverty. After teaching English overseas, he studied anthropology and the socio-economics of development, and did a PhD at Cambridge on El Salvador. He has taught at Stirling, Sussex and Liverpool universities and for the past 22 years has been an adviser on aid programmes, attempting to improve the lives of the poor. He has worked particularly on human rights, street children and other vulnerable groups, on giving more power to women and in the fields of conflict and social problems.