Mark Sedra is the President and co-founder of the Security Governance Group (SGG), a private consulting firm specializing on international security and governance issues. Mark’s research focuses predominantly on peace building and state building processes in fragile and conflict-affected states. He has conducted research on several countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, the Middle East and the Balkans.
Mark is also the Executive Director of the Centre for Security Governance (CSG), a non-profit think tank that he co-founded in 2012, and a Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, a leading open-access international relations journal, and the co-editor of the Routledge Book Series titled Studies in Conflict, Security and Development. Mark has published widely on international peace and security issues. His most recent book, Security Sector Reform in Conflict-Affected Countries: The Evolution of a Model, was published by Routledge in 2017.
Dr. Mark Downes is currently an Assistant Director of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) and Head of the International Security Sector Advisory Team (ISSAT). ISSAT is a multi-donor initiative that brings together SSR expertise, from the developmental, security, defence and diplomatic domains, in order to provide the international community (AU, EU, UN and donor countries) with comprehensive advice both on the technical and the process aspects of supporting security and justice reform. He previously worked for the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) where he was responsible for conceptualising and developing theOECD DAC Handbook on Security System Reform. Prior to that he worked on armed violence reduction and police reform, he was an advisor on parliamentary oversight of the security services and served previously as Head of the Strategic Development Unit within the Law Enforcement Department of the OSCE Mission to Serbia and Montenegro. Mark previously chaired (2008-9) the coordination committee of theAssociation for SSR Education and Training (ASSET), a global association of training organisations that promotes SSR education and training methodology. Mark has been a frequent trainer in SSR and DDR issues for the UN and a number of bilateral training institutions, he has provided support to security reform processes in a number of countries in Africa, Asia and South Eastern Europe and has been a visiting professor and guest lecturer at the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the University of the Vest in Timisoara Romania, the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), in Japan and at the Belgrade Open School in Belgrade, Serbia. Mark holds a Phd in political science from the University of Limerick in Ireland.
Dr. Robert Muggah is currently the Research Director of the Igarapé Institute and Research and Policy Director of the SecDev Group. From Brazil he directs several projects on international cooperation, peace-support operations, transnational organized crime, citizen security and violence prevention, and humanitarian action in non-war settings across Latin America and the Caribbean. He currently oversees the Humanitarian Action in Situations Other than War (HASOW) project, the States of Fragility project and the Urban Resilience project. He also advises the High Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda and the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Dr. Muggah received his DPhil at Oxford University and his MPhil at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. Dr Muggah is a fellow at both the universities of Oxford and San Diego
For the past ten years Dr, Muggah was research director at the Small Arms Survey (2000-2011), a lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and an adviser to the OECD-DAC, UN, and the World Bank. He has worked with multilateral and bilateral agencies in more than thirty countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, South Asia and the South Pacific on issues of arms control and violence reduction, security sector reform, migration and refugee policy, and gang violence reduction. His recent policy research includes chapters for the forthcoming Human Development Report (2013) for Latin America, the Urban Dilemma (2012) for IDRC and DFID, advisory support to the World Bank's World Development Report (2011), co-authorship of the UNDP Governance for Peace report (2012), and author of several OECD guidance notes on armed violence reduction.
Dr. Muggah's work is published in dozens of academic and policy journals. Most recently, he is the editor of Stability Operations, Security and Development (New York: Routledge, 2013) and co-editor of the Global Burden of Armed Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). He is also the author of Security and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Dealing with Fighters in the Aftermath of War (New York: Routledge, 2009), Relocation Failures in Sri Lanka: A Short History of Internal Displacement (London: Zed Books, 2008), and No Refuge: The Crisis of Refugee Militarization in Africa (London: Zed Books 2006) and has contributed more than 14 chapters to the Small Arms Survey since 2001. Dr. Muggah has published articles in International Peacekeeping, Security Dialogue, Contemporary Security Policy, The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, The Journal of Refugee Studies, The Journal of Disasters, Forced Migration Review, and many others. In addition to featuring in international media, Dr. Muggah has also been involved in co-writing and advising documentary films on violence, drug policy and development. Dr Muggah was also a speaker at TED in October 2014 and the Web Summit in November 2014.
Steven A. Zyck is a Founder and Co-Editor of Stability: International Journal of Security & Development and a Research Fellow at the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute in London. He is also an Associate of the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit (PRDU) at the University of York and the Centre for Security Governance. Steve guest lectures at numerous universities on post-conflict stabilisation, security sector reform, former combatant reintegration, economic growth, civil-military relations, conflict analysis, research methods and monitoring and evaluation.His research focuses on these same issues, with a geographic focus on the Middle East and South and Central Asia.
In addition to research and teaching, Steve has worked for a range of international organisations and NGOs, including ACTED and IOM. He also regularly consults for a range of organisations, including UNDP, UNICEF, WFP, IOM, DFID, the World Bank, Islamic Relief, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Institute of International Education, the Kuwait Foundation, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, NATO and many others. He has worked with these organisations in Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, Kenya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sudan, Kenya, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere. Some such assignments were completed through International Development Innovations, a boutique development consulting firm of which Steve is the Director.
Steve holds an MA in Post-war Recovery Studies from the University of York, which he earned while a Fulbright Scholar in the United Kingdom, as well as a BA from Dartmouth College.
Benoît Gomis is a researcher and lecturer on terrorism and illicit trade. In addition to his role of Managing Editor with Stability, he is a Research Consultant at the University of Bath, where he researches the illicit tobacco trade. He is also a Sessional Lecturer at the University of Toronto, where he teaches MA courses on terrorism and the illicit trade in drugs. In an independent capacity, he works with a number of organizations including governments, think tanks, NGOs, companies, and universities. Benoît is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, a Senior Fellow at the Canadian International Council (CIC), an Adjunct Instructor at American University (AU), and a frequent contributor to Jane’s Intelligence Review. He has authored over 100 papers, reports, and briefings, and one book (Counterterrorism: Reassessing the Policy Response, CRC Press 2015). He previously worked at Simon Fraser University, Chatham House, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and the French Ministry of Defence. He was educated at Sciences Po in Aix-en-Provence, Loyola University Chicago, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Dr. Christopher ANkersen is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Centre for Global Affairs at New York University. Prior to joining NYU, Christopher was the Security Advisor for the United Nations system in Thailand. Previously, he held positions at the UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; the UN Offices in Geneva and Vienna; and with the Department of Safety and Security in New York.
From 2002 to 2004, Dr. Ankersen was Ralf Dahrendorf Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has taught at the LSE, the London Centre for International Relations, King’s College London, Carleton University, the Royal Military College of Canada, and the Harvard Extension School. He has lectured at staff colleges in Canada, Australia, and Denmark.
From 2000 to 2005, he acted as a strategy consultant to militaries, governments and private firms in the UK and Canada. From 1988 to 2000, Dr. Ankersen was an officer in the Canadian Forces, serving in Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, including on overseas missions with the UN and NATO.
Dr. Ankersen is Senior Fellow at the Canadian International Council, Research Fellow at the Canadian Defence Associations Institute and Senior Research Fellow at the German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (CPG), Faculty of Law, Thammasat University, Thailand.
His current research interests include civil military relations, strategic studies, international security and the international relations of Asia.
Christopher Ankersen holds a BA (Hons) in International Politics and History from Royal Roads Military College (Canada) and an MSc and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Thomas Dournon is a consultant in Strategic Intelligence and International Security, and a lecturer in Strategic Analysis at the School of Economic Warfare of Paris. He is interested in issues such as Transnational Organize Crime, Illicit Trade, Governance, and Business Climate in North Africa and the Middle East. Thomas holds a Master’s degree in International Security and an MBA in Strategic Intelligence.
Nimmi Augustine is currently pursuing her Master's of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She graduated with a Bachelor in Electrical Engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada and was a Marine Systems Engineering Officer in the Canadian Armed forces. She is particularly interested in peacebuilding processes and its impact on marginalized communities. Just this past summer she completed an internship in Tunis, Tunisia with Access Now, an NGO focusing on digital rights.
Charlotte is a second year Master's of Global Affairs student at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She is interested in issues surrounding counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. Charlotte has interned for three summers in the U.S. federal government: one in the Senate, one for the U.S. Department of State, and one at U.S. Embassy Singapore.
Dulce Calderón Noguez is a second year Master of Global Affairs student at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, at the University of Toronto, specializing in environmental finance and global risk. Dulce graduated from the University of Alberta in June 2017, earning a double major in Political Science and History. Her career interests include global risk and security, sustainable economic growth and innovation. Dulce has worked with Engineers Without Borders as a Monitor and Evaluation officer, where she focused on impact investing, entrepreneurship and innovative technologies, as well as the Mexican government and CSOs on public health, risk, and policy analysis.
Dr. Mark Downes is currently an Assistant Director of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) and Head of the International Security Sector Advisory Team (ISSAT). ISSAT is a multi-donor initiative that brings together SSR expertise, from the developmental, security, defence and diplomatic domains, in order to provide the international community (AU, EU, UN and donor countries) with comprehensive advice both on the technical and the process aspects of supporting security and justice reform. He previously worked for the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) where he was responsible for conceptualising and developing theOECD DAC Handbook on Security System Reform. Prior to that he worked on armed violence reduction and police reform, he was an advisor on parliamentary oversight of the security services and served previously as Head of the Strategic Development Unit within the Law Enforcement Department of the OSCE Mission to Serbia and Montenegro. Mark previously chaired (2008-9) the coordination committee of theAssociation for SSR Education and Training (ASSET), a global association of training organisations that promotes SSR education and training methodology. Mark has been a frequent trainer in SSR and DDR issues for the UN and a number of bilateral training institutions, he has provided support to security reform processes in a number of countries in Africa, Asia and South Eastern Europe and has been a visiting professor and guest lecturer at the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the University of the Vest in Timisoara Romania, the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), in Japan and at the Belgrade Open School in Belgrade, Serbia. Mark holds a Phd in political science from the University of Limerick in Ireland.
Dr. Robert Muggah is currently the Research Director of the Igarapé Institute and Research and Policy Director of the SecDev Group. From Brazil he directs several projects on international cooperation, peace-support operations, transnational organized crime, citizen security and violence prevention, and humanitarian action in non-war settings across Latin America and the Caribbean. He currently oversees the Humanitarian Action in Situations Other than War (HASOW) project, the States of Fragility project and the Urban Resilience project. He also advises the High Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda and the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Dr. Muggah received his DPhil at Oxford University and his MPhil at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. Dr Muggah is a fellow at both the universities of Oxford and San Diego
For the past ten years Dr, Muggah was research director at the Small Arms Survey (2000-2011), a lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and an adviser to the OECD-DAC, UN, and the World Bank. He has worked with multilateral and bilateral agencies in more than thirty countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, South Asia and the South Pacific on issues of arms control and violence reduction, security sector reform, migration and refugee policy, and gang violence reduction. His recent policy research includes chapters for the forthcoming Human Development Report (2013) for Latin America, the Urban Dilemma (2012) for IDRC and DFID, advisory support to the World Bank's World Development Report (2011), co-authorship of the UNDP Governance for Peace report (2012), and author of several OECD guidance notes on armed violence reduction.
Dr. Muggah's work is published in dozens of academic and policy journals. Most recently, he is the editor of Stability Operations, Security and Development (New York: Routledge, 2013) and co-editor of the Global Burden of Armed Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). He is also the author of Security and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Dealing with Fighters in the Aftermath of War (New York: Routledge, 2009), Relocation Failures in Sri Lanka: A Short History of Internal Displacement (London: Zed Books, 2008), and No Refuge: The Crisis of Refugee Militarization in Africa (London: Zed Books 2006) and has contributed more than 14 chapters to the Small Arms Survey since 2001. Dr. Muggah has published articles in International Peacekeeping, Security Dialogue, Contemporary Security Policy, The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, The Journal of Refugee Studies, The Journal of Disasters, Forced Migration Review, and many others. In addition to featuring in international media, Dr. Muggah has also been involved in co-writing and advising documentary films on violence, drug policy and development. Dr Muggah was also a speaker at TED in October 2014 and the Web Summit in November 2014.
Steven A. Zyck is a Founder and Co-Editor of Stability: International Journal of Security & Development and a Research Fellow at the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute in London. He is also an Associate of the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit (PRDU) at the University of York and the Centre for Security Governance. Steve guest lectures at numerous universities on post-conflict stabilisation, security sector reform, former combatant reintegration, economic growth, civil-military relations, conflict analysis, research methods and monitoring and evaluation.His research focuses on these same issues, with a geographic focus on the Middle East and South and Central Asia.
In addition to research and teaching, Steve has worked for a range of international organisations and NGOs, including ACTED and IOM. He also regularly consults for a range of organisations, including UNDP, UNICEF, WFP, IOM, DFID, the World Bank, Islamic Relief, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Institute of International Education, the Kuwait Foundation, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, NATO and many others. He has worked with these organisations in Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, Kenya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sudan, Kenya, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere. Some such assignments were completed through International Development Innovations, a boutique development consulting firm of which Steve is the Director.
Steve holds an MA in Post-war Recovery Studies from the University of York, which he earned while a Fulbright Scholar in the United Kingdom, as well as a BA from Dartmouth College.
