Dr. Sara Niner is an interdisciplinary researcher and lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University.She is an expert in the field of gender and international development with a particular interest in those issues in the post-conflict environment of Timor-Leste and is widely published in this field.  As a regional gender expert, Dr Niner has analysed and reported on gender issues in S. E. Asia for local and international development agencies such as UNDP, UN Women, Oxfam and International Women’s Development Agency. Prior to becoming a critical development scholar she spent a decade working with the East Timorese diaspora in Australia followed by many years working and researching in Timor-Leste after the nation became independent post-1999.

Dr Niner has disseminated research findings internationally in high quality academic journals. She edited Women and the politics of gender in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste, Women in Asia Series, published in 2017 with Routledge in the UK. She is also the editor of To Resist is to Win: the Autobiography of Xanana Gusmão with selected letters and speeches (Aurora Books, Melbourne, 2000) and author of Xanana: Leader of the Struggle for Independent Timor-Leste (Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2009) which was translated into Portuguese as Xanana: Líder da luta pela independência de Timor-Leste (Don Quixote Publishing: Lisbon 2011).