Middle East & North Africa
In the MENA region I have led and managed research on conflict, security and governance dynamics in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen, as well as supporting pan-regional analysis and strategy development by the Swedish government. More recently, I have provided advice and support to efforts to promote long term conflict transformation and peacebuilding in Israel and Palestine.
Past assignments include:
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
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)
Report: ‘Conflict analysis to inform MENA strategy,’ (Saferworld helpdesk task for Sida, Jan 2019)
Report with Jordan Street & Luca Venchiarutti: ‘UN peace operations in complex environments: charting the right course,’ (Saferworld, 2018)
Policy brief: 'Building peace into refugee responses: Syrian refugees in Lebanon,' (Saferworld, 2018)
Report with Saleem Haddad & Lola Aliaga: ‘Building peace into refugee responses: Syrian refugees in Lebanon,’ (Saferworld, 2018)
Member of the International Development Taskforce advising the UK Shadow Development Secretary on Labour’s 2018 green paper: ‘A World for the Many Not the Few: the Labour Party’s Vision for International Development,’ (Labour, 2018)
(Project managed and edited) report by David Keen: ‘Syria: Playing into their hands: regime and international roles in fuelling violence and fundamentalism in the Syrian war,’ (Saferworld, 2017)
Article with David Keen: ‘Syria: The West’s Three Biggest Blunders and How to Fix Them,’ (Lobelog, 2017)
Project managed and edited report: ‘We need to talk about Egypt: how brutal counter-terrorism is failing Egypt and its allies,’ (Saferworld, 2017)
Project managed and edited report by Lola Aliaga & Kloe O’Farrell: ‘Counter-terror in Tunisia: a road paved with good intentions?’ (Saferworld, 2017)
Article with Farea Al-Muslimi: ‘US Counterterror Strategy Has Crashed and Burned,’ (Lobelog, 2016)
Article: ‘You can’t bomb your way to peace,’ (Open Society Foundations, 2016)
Policy brief with Sunil Suri: ‘A new war on terror or a new search for peace: lessons from Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen,’ (Saferworld, 2016)
Report: ‘Blown back: lessons from counter-terror, stabilisation and statebuilding in Yemen,’ (Saferworld, 2016)
Report with David Keen: ‘Dilemmas of counterterror, stabilisation and statebuilding,’ (Saferworld, 2015)