I have lengthy experience in the region beginning with my deployment in 2006 to support the UN’s DDR planning following the agreement of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan in 2005. My experience covers Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya and Somalia, and includes developing the methodology for a UK funded conflict and governance mapping initiative on Somalia, reviewing and advising on Sida's programme portfolio on Somalia, and on its PVE programming in the wider African region. I have a long record of providing support to Saferworld's Somalia and Kenya programmes on both strategy development and programme design, and have managed, co-authored and/or edited field-based research on terrorism, counter-terrorism and conflict dynamics in both Kenya and Somalia.

Past assignments include:

• Rynn S, Jones M, Attree L, ‘Furthering Global Britain? Reviewing the Foreign Policy Effect of UK Engagement in East Africa - Occasional Paper,’ RUSI (August 2023)

• Jones M, Attree L, ‘Bargaining with the Green City in the Sun: An Appraisal of UK Engagement in Kenya,’ (RUSI, August 2023)

• Led and co-authored two strands of research for the FCDO-funded project ‘Stabilisation and resilience strategies: what works to address threats posed by violent criminal or proscribed groups?’ (2021-22)

• Report with Abigail Watson: ‘How guns fall silent: Analysing examples of relative success in integrated stabilisation,’ (Saferworld/FCDO funded, May 2022)

• Report with Jordan Street: ‘No shortcuts to security: learning from responses to armed conflicts involving proscribed groups,’ (Saferworld/FCDO funded, May 2022)

• Provided strategic and operational advice to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in response to requests to the Saferworld, Bradford University and Stockholm Policy Group helpdesks on peace, human rights, rule of law and conflict sensitivity, including authoring a number of written reports from 2010 onwards

• Podcast series - researched, scripted, cohosted and produced: Reckoning with 9/11, 8-part special series of Saferworld’s Warpod, September-November 2021, with Pulitzer-prize winning journalists and experts from affected countries (scripted, co-hosted and edited)

• Provided advice and helped develop Saferworld's regional & country peacebuilding programming in the Balkans, Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Yemen

• Report with Jordan Street: ‘Conflict sensitivity assessment of UNDP’s "Preventing and Responding to Violent Extremism in Africa: A Development Approach”,’ (Saferworld helpdesk task for Sida, November 2020)

• Project managed and edited report by Jo Crouch: ‘Counter-terror and the logic of violence in Somalia’s civil war: time for a new approach,’ (Saferworld, Dec 2018)

• Report with Jordan Street & Luca Venchiarutti: ‘UN peace operations in complex environments: charting the right course,’ (Saferworld, 2018)

• Report with Thomas Nyagah: ‘Inside Kenya’s war on terror: the case of Lamu,’ (Saferworld, 2017)

• Report with Chris Wakube: ‘Inside Kenya’s war on terror: breaking the cycle of violence in Garissa,’ (Saferworld, 2017)

• Policy brief with Sunil Suri: ‘A new war on terror or a new search for peace: lessons from Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen,’ (Saferworld, 2016)

• Project managed and edited report by Sunil Suri: ‘Barbed wire on our heads: lessons from counter-terror, stabilisation and statebuilding in Somalia,’ (Saferworld, 2016)

• Policy brief with Lauren Hutton, Ben Stevenson & Paul Murphy: ‘People’s Peacemaking Perspectives - South Sudan,’ (Saferworld, Conciliation Resources, March 2012)

• Article with Sara Skinner & Choul Nhial: ‘A state in crisis: Jonglei’, & L Attree, A Giera, ‘Conflict dynamics and the oil impasse’ in ‘South Sudan Monitor,’ (Saferworld, February 2012)

• Report Chapter: ‘Sudan and South Sudan,’ in I Campbell, T Wheeler, L Attree, D Butler, B Mariani, ‘China and conflict-affected states: Between principle and pragmatism,’ (Saferworld, January 2012)

• Developed the feasibility study for a UK-funded conflict and governance mapping system for donors and aid agencies working in Somalia

• Report: 'Sudan: Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst?' (Dec Saferworld, 2010)

• Co-ordinated primary research and writing a Socio-Economic Profiling and Opportunity Mapping to plan reintegration of ex-combatants in North and South Sudan (for Transition International and UNDDR/UNDP), and trained Sudan’s DDR Commissions in reintegration planning

• Report with Irma Specht and Yvonne Kemper: ‘Red Shoes: Experiences of girl-combatants in Liberia,’ (Geneva, International Labour Office, 2006)