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.
Professor Etannibi Alemika is a professor of criminology and sociology of law, specializing in criminology, sociology of law, criminal justice reform, policy and practice, and security governance,. He holds BSc and MSc degrees in sociology from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and an MSc and PhD in criminology from the Department of Social System Sciences, Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of Board of several professional and academic organisations, including CLEEN Foundation in Nigeria; African Civilian Policing Oversight Forum (APCOF) and Altus Global Alliance, and a member of the American Society of Criminology and Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Prof. Alemika has published in several journals, including Journal of Criminal Justice; International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice; Police Studies: International Review of Police Development; Crime, Law and Social Change; International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, Police Practice and Research. He is a leading researcher and author on police and policing, prison and penal policy, security and criminal justice reform in Nigeria, and teaches criminology, penology, and sociology of law at the University of Jos.
Professor Sultan Barakat (BSc University of Jordan, Amman, MA and DPhil University of York, UK) is the Founding Director of the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit (PRDU), which was established at the University of York in 1993. He is internationally known for having pioneered both scholarship and practice in the field of post-war recovery. Among his principal achievements has been the shaping of a generation of academic and practitioner leaders, both in the UK and overseas, in the fields of post-conflict reconstruction, disaster management and recovery, humanitarian assistance, conflict management and foreign policy. Back in 1996 he designed and launched the PRDU's innovative Master's course in Post-war Recovery Studies. Professor Barakat has supervised 12 successful doctoral candidates and is currently supervising another six.
Professor Barakat was the Director of the prestigious FCO Senior Chevening Fellows Programme on Conflict Resolution, 2006-2009. He has served as a Visiting and Guest Lecturer at a number of European and North American universities. Outside of the classroom, Professor Barakat is engaged in providing guidance as a Senior Adviser and Consultant to the United Nations, the World Bank, European Union, DFID, ILO, IFRC, the Dutch and Norwegian Ministries of Foreign Affairs, United States Institute of Peace, the Higher Education Funding Council for England and a variety of governments and international non-governmental organizations including CARE and Tiri. Since 2004, he has generated more than ₤2 million from his research and consulting activities, which have included major evaluations and programming initiatives. In 2005-2006, he led a seminal evaluation of the National Solidarity Programme in Afghanistan, one of the largest post-conflict reconstruction projects in recent history, for the World Bank and Afghan government.
Professor Barakat currently leads the PRDU's involvement in the Fragile States Development Consortium which is providing expertise to the UK's Government Departments (DFID, FCO, MoD) regarding stabilisation, recovery and development in conflict-affected states. The Consortium regularly provides services related to programme development, training and capacity building, monitoring and evaluation, policy development and conflict analysis and mitigation with an emphasis on the political-economy of violence.
Professor Barakat has published more than 100 scholarly articles, book chapters, papers and commissioned reports and has conducted research across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Selected Publications
Books/chapters
(2008) (ed.) Reconstructing Post-Saddam Iraq (New York, Routledge)
(2005) (ed.) After the Conflict: Reconstruction and Development in the Aftermath of War (London, I.B. Tauris)
(2003) Housing Reconstruction After Conflict and Disaster. London :ODI
Guest editor of academic journals
(2005) 'Reconstructing Post-Saddam Iraq: A Quixotic Beginning to the ‘Global Democratic Revolution', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No 4&5
(2002) 'Reconstructing War-torn Societies: Afghanistan', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 23, No.5, 2002
(1995) 'War and its aftermath: rebuilding war-torn societies', Disaster Prevention and Management, MCB University Press, Vol.4, No.1
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
(2010) ‘Housing Reconstruction as Socio-economic Recovery and State Building: Evidence from Southern Lebanon’, Housing Studies, 14th October 2010, with S. Zyck
(2009) "The State Building Implications of Post-Conflict Demilitarization: Military Downsizing in Bosnia and Herzegovina", Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 33, No. 6, with S. Zyck
(2009) "The Evolution of Post-war Recovery", Third World Quarterly Vol. 30, No. 6, with S. Zyck
(2009) "The Failed Promise of Multi-Donor Trust Funds: Aid Financing as an Impediment to Effective State-Building in Post-Conflict Environments", Policy Studies Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 107-126
(2005) 'Attributing Value: evaluating success and failure in post-war reconstruction', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4&5, pp. 831-852, with M. Chard and R. Jones
(2005) 'Impact of the reintegration of former KLA combatants on the post-war recovery of Kosovo', International Journal of Peace Studies, Vol 10, No 1, Spring/Summer 2005, pp. 27-45 (with Alp Ozerdem)
Reports
(2010) Programme Review and Evaluability Study (PRES): UNICEF’s Education in emergencies & Post-Crisis Transition (EEPCT) Programme. UNICEF, (with F. Hardman, D. Connolly, V. Sundaram and S. Zyck)
(2009) The Reconstruction of Gaza: A Guidance Note for Palestinian and International Stakeholders, York: Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit, (with S. Zyck and J. Hunt)
(2008) Housing Compensation and Emergency Preparedness in the Aftermath of the July 2006 War in Southern Lebanon, a report commissioned and published by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Beirut, December (with S. Zyck)
(2006) Governance and Recovery in Darfur: UNDP Options for Community Empowerment and DPA Institutional Development, York, University of York: 7 September, pp. 1 – 34
(2006) Final Report of the NSP mid-term Evaluation, York, University of York: May, pp. 1 - 350 (with M. Chard, D. Connolly, M. Evans and R. Jones)
(2004) (with R. Jones and W. Lume) Mapping Conflict in Uganda, the Government of Uganda and the European Commission
(2003) Housing Reconstruction after Conflict and Disaster, London: Overseas Development Institute
(2001) (with Evans, M. & Strand, A.) Back to Basics: Reconstruction and Development in Sri Lanka, Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit, Department of Politics, University of York, June, report commissioned by the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies in Sri Lanka, pp. 1 - 111
Dr Nora Bensahel is Deputy Director of Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. She recently co-authored Hard Choices: Responsible Defense in an Age of Austerity. Her other research interests include stability operations, counterinsurgency, civilian capacity for operations abroad, and coalition and alliance operations. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, where she teaches M.A. classes and received the Alumni Leadership Council Teaching Award.
Prior to joining CNAS, Dr. Bensahel served as a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. She published many reports there, including After Saddam: Postwar Planning and the Occupation of Iraq, Improving Capacity for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations, Europe’s Role in Nation-Building, The Counterterror Coalitions, and “The Experience of Foreign Militaries,” in Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel Policy: An Update of RAND’s 1993 Study. She has also written several book chapters and published articles in Defence Studies, European Security, Joint Force Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Survival.
Dr. Bensahel has made expert appearances on a wide range of domestic and international television and radio programs, including ARD, BBC, CBS, C-SPAN, Fox News, NBC, NPR, PBS, and Voice of America. She has also been quoted by The New York Times, USA Today, National Journal, Politico, The Huffington Post, Newsweek, Associated Press, and Reuters.
She received her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University and her B.A., magna cum laude, from Cornell University. While at Stanford, she worked as a research assistant for former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry. She held fellowships at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.
Thomas Biersteker is the first holder of the Curt Gasteyger Chair in International Security and Conflict Studies at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. This Chair was established thanks to the support of the APESI to honour Professor Gasteyger, HEI professor emeritus.
The author/editor of nine books, including State Sovereignty as Social Construct, The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, and Countering the Financing of Terrorism, Biersteker’s research focuses primarily on international relations theory and economic aspects of contemporary global security issues. His recent activities include work with the UN Secretariat and the governments of Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany on the design of targeted sanctions.
He was previously Professor of Political Science at Brown University where he served for many years as Director of the Watson Institute for International Studies. He has also taught at Yale University and at the University of Southern California. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Honorary Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, and a Fellow of the Club of Madrid.
Selected Publications
Countering the Financing of Global Terrorism (Routledge Publishers, 2006), co-edited with Sue Eckert.
International Law and International Relations: Bridging Theory and Practice (Routledge Publishers 2006) co-edited with Veronica Raffo, Peter Sprio, and Chandra Sriram.
War, Money and Survival (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 2000), co-edited with S. Fleming.
The Re-Bordering North America (Routledge Publishers, 2003), co-edited with Peter Andreas.
The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2002), co-edited with Rodney B. Hall.
(with Robert S. McNamara) "Lessons of Vietnam for the 21st Century," in Argument without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (PublicAffairs Press, 1999).
State Sovereignty As Social Construct (Cambridge University Press, 1996), co-edited with Cynthia Weber.
Sarah Cliffe has worked for the last twenty years in countries emerging from conflict and political transition, covering Afghanistan, Burundi, CAR, DRC, Guinea Bissau, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan, South Africa, and Timor Leste.
Prior to joining the Bank, she worked for the United Nations Development Program in Rwanda, the Government of South Africa, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, as well as for a major management consultancy company in the United Kingdom on public sector reform issues. She holds degrees in History and Economic Development from Cambridge and Columbia Universities.
Since joining the Bank, her work has covered post-conflict reconstruction, community driven development and civil service reform. She was chief of mission for the Bank’s program in Timor-Leste from 1999 to 2002; led the Bank’s Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group from 2002-2007; and was Director of Operations for East Asia and the Pacific from 2007 – 2009. She was Special Representative and Director for the World Development Report on Conflict, Security and Development from 2009 to 2011. She is currently on secondment to the United Nations as Special Adviser and Assistant Secretary-General, Civilian Capacities.
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.
Clare Lockhart is co-founder and CEO of the Institute for State Effectiveness, and Director of the Market Building Program at Aspen Institute, which advises governments, civil society and private sector actors, and international organizations on transitions. She was a member of the Bonn negotiation team for Afghanistan in 2001, and has served as manager of a program on institutions at the World Bank and practiced as a human rights barrister. She has degrees from Oxford University, Harvard University, and the Inns of Court School of Law. She has written extensively on state-building, and is the co-author of “Fixing Failed States” (OUP 2008) and a number of articles, and comments on current issues frequently in the media including Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, the New York Times, PBS, Sky News, and the Washington Post.
Gary Milante came to the World Bank in 2003 as a researcher, focusing on the causes and impacts of conflict and fragility as well as on effective post-conflict recovery. His interests are in applied game theory and modeling the political economy of peaceful compromise. Before joining the WDR 2011 team, Gary held a joint position in the Development Economics Research Group and the Bank’s Fragile and Conflict Affected Countries Group. He led the Bank’s "Peace and Development" research project focusing on successful post-conflict economic recovery through effective powersharing arrangements, political systems and macroeconomic policy. He has conducted research in Sudan and has recently written on the upcoming referendum. Additionally, he manages research projects on landmines and geography of conflict data, has written on the "Arab Democracy Deficit" and was a guest editor for a special edition on post-conflict transitions for the Journal of Peace Research.
Gary has taught the World Bank's core course on fragility and conflict for internal and external audiences and leads the "Carana" post-conflict recovery simulation exercise for the course. He received his PhD in economics from the University of California at Irvine.
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.
'Funmi Olonisakin, BSc (Ife), PhD (London), has been Director of the Conflict, Security and Development Group at King’s College London, since 2003. Prior to this, she worked at the United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (OSRSG/ CAAC), as Adviser on Africa. She has held research and visiting positions at the University of Lagos (Nigeria) and the Institute of Strategic Studies, University of Pretoria (South Africa). Funmi Olonisakin is an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) and West African Regional Coordinator of the African Security Sector Network (ASSN). She is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces, (DCAF) and of the Advisory Board of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Training for Peace (TfP) Programme. She is also a Trustee of the Centre for Democracy and Development (UK and Nigeria), which she co-founded.
Selected Publications
Women and new narratives of security governance in Africa, (co-edited with Awino Okech) Pambazuka Press, 2011
Security Sector Transformation in Africa (co-edited with Alan Bryden), Lit Verlag, 2010
Women and the UN Peace and Security Agenda: Implementing UNSC Resolution 1325 on the ground (co-edited with Karen Barnes and Eka Ikpe), Routledge, 2010
The Challenges of Security Sector Governance in West Africa (co-edited with Alan Bryden and Boubacar N’diaye), Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2008.
Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone: The Story of UNAMSIL, Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2008
Global Development and Human Security, (co-authored with Robert Picciotto and Michael Clarke), Transaction Publishers, 2007
A Handbook on Security Sector Governance in Africa (Lagos: Centre for Democracy and Development), 2004 (co-authored with Nicole Ball, Kayode Fayemi and Rocklyn Williams & Edited by Ball and Fayemi.)
Reinventing Peacekeeping in Africa: Conceptual and Legal Issues in the ECOMOG Operations, (The Hague: Kluwer Law International), 2000
Engaging Sierra Leone, edited with Abdel-Fatau Musah (London: Centre for Democracy and Development), 2000.
Peacekeepers, Politicians and Warlords: The Liberian Peace Process (Tokyo: United Nations University Press), 1999 (co-authored with John Mackinlay and Abiodun Alao).
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.
Peter Walker is the Rosenberg Professor of Nutrition and Human Security at Tufts University. He has been the Director of the Feinstein International Center at Tufts since September 2002 and has been active in development and disaster response since 1979,.Peter has worked for a number of British-based NGOs and environmental organizations in several African countries, as well as having been a university lecturer and director of a food wholesaling company. Peter joined the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva in 1990 where he was Director of Disaster Policy for 10 years before moving to Bangkok as Head of the Federation's regional programs for Southeast Asia. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and has published widely on subjects as diverse as the development of indigenous knowledge and famine early warning systems, to the role of military forces in disaster relief. Peter was the founder and manager of the World Disasters Report and played a key role in initiating and developing both the Code of Conduct for disaster workers and the Sphere humanitarian standards.
Local Knowledge -- The Forgotten Resource — By P.J.C. Walker. In M. Nazim (Ed.), Environmental Challenges: From Stockholm to Brazil and Beyond. The Environmental Society of Bangladesh, 1993.
A Blueprint for Professionalizing Humanitarian Assistance: Good Intentions Are Not Enough. Walker, P., K. Hein, C. Russ, G. Bertleff, and D. Caspersz. Health Affairs 29, no. 12 (December, 2010): 2223-2230
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.
Nawroos completed her Masters in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs with a particular focus on the discourse surrounding Islam in post-2008 mainstream American news media. Previously, she worked as a transcriber for the Grand Council of the Crees and held various research assistant roles. Nawroos currently works as program assistant for the International Law Research Program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
