Denys Nizalov

Dr Denys Nizalov is Chair and Co-Founder of Canterbury for Ukraine. He has a professional career in academia and consultancy. Denys is a Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University, UK, and a Senior Land Governance Adviser for the Prindex Project , where he supports research and country engagement in the field of land and housing tenure security and the assessment of the related SDG indicators.

Since 2023, Denys supports the UN4UkrainianCities Project, focusing on the establishment of Ukrainian Urban Planning Cadastre and facilitating the rebuilding of war-affected Ukrainian cities.

Before taking on his current positions, Denys worked as a Programme Director for the World Bank project “Supporting Transparent Land Governance in Ukraine”, where he was involved in designing and implementing the agricultural land reform.

He has worked in the fields of agricultural, rural, and regional development and impact evaluation for more than 20 years in countries including Georgia, Ukraine, the United States, Colombia, India, Nigeria, and Croatia.

He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the independent analytical platform VoxUkraine.
Denys completed a PhD programme in Agricultural Economics at Michigan State University in 2006 and held professorship and administrative positions at the Kyiv School of Economics, Ukraine.

“During the first days of the full-scale war in Ukraine, I was lucky to meet a large number of local people in Canterbury, who wanted to help Ukraine and Ukrainian people. But not only wanted, but ready to act to provide practical support. We joined our efforts and established Canterbury for Ukraine as a support hub for the displaced Ukrainians. Since then, volunteering for Canterbury for Ukraine was my way to serve the country” — Dr Denys Nizalov.