John Butterworth (BSc Geography 1992) is a Senior Programme officer at the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre in Delft, the Netherlands. After not doing the hydrology course at Royal Holloway, I later did a mainly hydrological MSc and PhD in Reading and ended up, after periods with the then Overseas Development Administration (in Zimbabwe), the Institute of Hydrology in Wallingford, consultants Scott Wilson and the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich, focusing on water issues in developing countries with IRC. 

I now work mainly on institutional and governance issues  in relation to water and sanitation in developing countries. Recently I’ve been focusing on sector transparency and accountability and their flip side, corruption. This involved helping set up a network called the Water Integrity Network and contributing to the Global Corruption Report that focused on water this year. The other main area of my work is trying to improve the impact of research and sector learning through better partnerships between research providers, knowledge managers and implementing agencies.

Recently I became a trans-frontier knowledge (home) worker, and now I live in Lodz, Poland, and spend a week a month in the office in the Netherlands. Many thanks to the European Union for making that possible!