Professor Tilman Brück is the Founder and Director of ISDC. He is also Professor for Economic Development and Food Security at Humboldt-University of Berlin and Team Leader – Development Economics and Food Security at IGZ near Berlin. Tilman is also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the „Households in Conflict Network” (HiCN) and the Principal Investigator of the Life in Kyrgyzstan Study (LiK Study).

His research interests focus on the economics of household behavior and well-being in areas affected by violent conflict, fragility and humanitarian emergencies, including the measurement of violence and conflict in household surveys and the impact evaluation of programs in conflict-affected areas. He has published over sixty articles in peer-reviewed journals (including Demography, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Peace Research, Social Science & Medicine and World Development) and edited over a dozen books and special issues of journals on the economics of conflict and insecurity. Tilman has led as a principal investigator many impact evaluations in conflict-affected and fragile states and in humanitarian emergencies.

Tilman was previously Professor of Food Security, State Fragility and Climate Change at the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich, Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics (LSE), Director of SIPRI, Professor of Development Economics at Humboldt-University of Berlin, and Head of the Department of Development and Security at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). He has also worked as a consultant for the German Foreign Office, BMZ, European Commission, DFID, FAO, GIZ, IFAD, ILO, KfW, OECD, PBSO, UNDP, UNHCR, USAID, WFP and the World Bank. Tilman studied economics at the University of Glasgow and the University of Oxford and obtained his doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford.