Simone Haysom is the Thematic Lead on Environmental Crime. She leads the work of the Market Monitoring and Friction Unit, which uses digital technology, including machine-learning enabled processes, to understand and respond to illegal online marketing of wildlife  products.

With a background working on drug trafficking and conflict-induced urban displacement, she has over a decade of experience conducting qualitative fieldwork in challenging environments and analysing how urban development, corruption and organised crime evolve and intersect.

Between 2010 and 2013, she worked for the Overseas Development Institute in London, researching urban displacement in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, and humanitarian policy in conflict zones. Before joining the GI in 2017, she worked as a freelance consultant, researching issues related to conflict, development and organised crime for organisations including Médecins Sans Frontières, the Institute for Security Studies, and the University of Cape Town.

She is the author of The Last Words of Rowan du Preez: Murder and Conspiracy on the Cape Flats, published by Jonathan Ball. She has been a Visiting Academic at the School of African Studies at the University of Oxford, and an associate at the University of the Witwatersrand..