Peace News Expert Network

As a research associate at the Africa Center, Paul Nantulya researches and prepares written analysis on contemporary Africa security issues. His areas of expertise include Chinese foreign policy, China/Africa relations, African partnerships with Southeast Asian countries, mediation and peace processes, the Great Lakes region, and East and Southern Africa.

Prior to joining the Africa Center, Mr. Nantulya served as a regional technical advisor on South Sudan for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) from 2009 to 2011, where he supported crisis mitigation for the Government of South Sudan including writing policy analyses for the Ministry of Peace and Comprehensive Peace Agreement Implementation. In this role he worked closely with South Sudan’s external partners, particularly Japan’s International Cooperation Agency, on conflict prevention.

Dr. Philipp Busch is a game designer, author and international keynote speaker. In spring 2018 Busch finished his doctoral thesis on “Gamification and Serious Games in Development Cooperation”. He teaches game-based approaches and agile methods at the University of Mainz, Germany and is a certified Scrum Master and Design Thinking Coach. He has worked for several years in the sector of international cooperation with a specific focus on Gamification, Serious Games and interactive digital learning scenarios. In 2020, Busch started his own consultancy working in close cooperation with different actors of international cooperation. His company Mind Games GmbH supports institutions such as the ILO, ETUI, FES or GIZ on implementing innovative learning scenarios in heterogeneous contexts, for instance Yemen, China, Afghanistan and a variety of African countries.

Pol Bargués is research fellow at CIDOB (Barcelona Center for International Affairs), Barcelona, Spain. His research examines war-peace transitions and the evolution of international interventions. He is Editor in Chief of theJournal of Intervention and Statebuilding

Quhramaana Kakar manages Conciliation Resources’ Women Mediators across the Commonwealth program, and is a former adviser to the High Peace Council of Afghanistan.

Rabina Shresthais the Country Director of International Alert Nepal. She is a gender equality, justice, peacebuilding and rule of law expert with extensive experience working on human rights, transitional justice, media rights and rule of law in Nepal.

Dr. Richard (Drew) Marcantonio is a researcher, teacher, and practitioner focused on regenerative and durable livelihoods, environmental management and policy, environmental and other violence, and peacebuilding. He is the author of Environmental Violence: In the Earth System and the Human Niche (2022; Cambridge University Press), co-author of the textbook Environmental Management: Concepts and Practical Skills (2022; Cambridge University Press), and lead co-editor (with John Paul Lederach and Agustin Fuentes) of Environmental Violence Explored (2024; Cambridge University Press). He has published numerous peer-reviewed, policy, and public facing articles in periodicals ranging fromPeacebuildingtoEnvironmental Science and Policyto the popular periodical theBulletin of Atomic Scientists. He has conducted research and practice on these critical issues on five continents working with communities, elected officials, regulators, corporations, and NGOs alike.

Robert Kosho Ndiyun is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Tshwane University of Technology. He was previously a PhD researcher at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His research focuses on transitional justice in conflict and post conflict situations. He also Lectured at International University Bamenda in Cameroon, Heritage Higher Institute of Peace and Development Studies Yaoundé, and Higher Institute of Educational and Professional Studies, Yaoundé.

Dr. Rodrigo Mena Fluhmann is an Assistant Professor of Disasters and Humanitarian Governance, also serving as the Deputy Director of the Humanitarian Studies Centre (HSCOpens external) and Coordinator of the Safety and Security Research Initiative(SSRi). With almost twenty years of experience, his focus has been on disaster governance (disaster response and risk reduction), climate change, humanitarian action, and environmental sociology, particularly in fragile, conflict-affected, and vulnerable (FCV) settings. He teachs courses covering humanitarian, disaster risk reduction, and complex emergency governance; research methodology, both quantitative and mixed methods; and research ethics, safety, and security.

At the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), he co-coordinates the Humanitarian Governance project (HUM-GOV), funded by a European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant. This project delves into the evolving dynamics of humanitarian governance, with special attention to civil society actors and crisis-affected populations. Additionally, he contributes to the coordination of the Observatorio Humanitario de América Latina y el Caribe (OH-LACOpens external).

Rok Zupančič, PhD, is a Full Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences. His expert sphere includes peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and regional security (Southeast Europe). He is the Principal Investigator in the research project "Anxieties in cities of Southeast European post-conflict societies: introducing an integrative approach to peacebuilding," which explores how different sort of anxieties in post-conflict societies affect the bodies and minds of people, and how this hinders the attempts to reduce the ethnic distance between people previously involved in armed conflicts.

Dr Ronan Lee is an Irish-Australian Doctoral Prize Fellow at Loughborough University London where he researches the meaning of social vitality for Rohingya refugees. In 2021 he was awarded the Early Career Emerging Scholar Prize by the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He was formerly a visiting scholar at Queen Mary University of London’s International State Crime Initiative. His research interests include Myanmar, the Rohingya, genocide, hate speech, and politics.