Lindiwe Mpofu

Biography

Lindiwe Mpofu is a PhD researcher at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin. Her doctoral research examines NGO leadership and the collaborative competencies required within donor-funded international development partnerships. Her wider research interests include leadership development, ethical leadership, cross-sector collaboration and development effectiveness.

She holds an Executive Master of Business Administration and a Master's in Leadership and Governance, both from the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe.

Lindiwe has over ten years of experience across Africa’s international development and humanitarian sectors, specialising in evaluation, learning and field-based research. An experienced qualitative and quantitative researcher, she has trained and supervised research teams, including people entering research without prior training, to undertake data collection for development programmes. Her work has involved close engagement with NGO leaders, implementing organisations, government actors, community leaders and programme beneficiaries.

At Trinity, Lindiwe has served as Part-Time Officer for Research and, during 2026, built and led a cross-university network spanning nine schools and involving teams of at least five postgraduate research leaders in each school. Through this initiative, she enabled more than 45 emerging leaders to coordinate teams and deliver interdisciplinary research and networking events. She also contributes to leadership simulations and leadership capstone activities alongside Trinity faculty and serves on the TEDx Trinity College Dublin speaker selection review panel. Her leadership of postgraduate researchers and research communities has been featured in The University Times and the School of Natural Sciences newsletter.

Her longstanding engagement with leadership is further demonstrated by her co-authored journal article, “Exploration of How Ethical Leadership Is Understood in the Zimbabwe Non-Governmental Organizations Sector.” She is a member of Trinity’s Centre for Social Innovation and Development Studies Association Ireland (DSAI), connecting her work with academic and practitioner communities concerned with leadership, social innovation and international development.