Our Leadership & Members

Stef is a Senior Lecturer in Public Communication and Civil Development. Her research interest and expertise focus on the role that public communication can play in the building, development as well as in the diminishment and destruction of civil societies (emergent and mature). She has just published her third research monograph entitled Communication in Peacebuilding: Civil Wars, Civility and Safe Spaces (published with Palgrave Macmillan). She is currently working on how soap opera can engage in civil norm building as well as a new book project on the soundscape of civil society. Previously, Stef has examined how European citizenship was publicly communicated to European citizens from 1951 onwards and she has looked at how the EU has tried to stimulate what she calls a Civil Europe from the 1950s onwards through the use of culture, the mass media and education. She has acted as an official historian for the European Commission and its policies on public opinion and citizenship.

Stef also currently acts as a consultant on a project assessing the European Schools System (commissioned by the European Parliament) as well as for the UN DDR programme and the revision of its public information module. Her first two books were Representations of European citizenship since 1951 and The Building of Civil Europe 1951-1972. Stef is also part of the British Council funded Digital MAPS project together with BuildUp and datavaluepeople.

Executive Director of Agents of Peace, Kenya

Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence 

University of Winnipeg 

Co-founder of Conflict and Resilience Research Institute Canada (CRRIC).

Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence 

Director of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS),

University of Hargeisa, Somaliland

Security, governance, state capacity and fragility

Center for Peacemaking Practice, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University

Principal Investigator of the Better Evidence Project

Interactive peacemaking

Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University and the Director of the Purdue Policy Research Institute (PPRI) and Director of the Purdue Peace Project (PPP)

Political violence prevention, communicative constitution of leadership and multi-stakeholder organizing, locally-led peacebuilding initiatives, Ghana, Liberia, and Nigeria.

Africa Lead at Build Up, Senior Specialist at PeaceTech Lab

Information, Communication and Technologies for Development (ICT4D), technology in peacebuilding, conflict in Africa, social media listening, data and network analysis, strategic communications, conflict analysis and community building

Peace, reconciliation, mining and conflict, non-violent communication, entrepreneurship, development, human rights, the Democratic Republic of Congodevelopment, human rights.

National Coordinator of NGO SOS-Civisme-Niger
Citizenship education, culture of peace and strengthening of democracy

Concordia University

Genocide, human rights, international security, online extremism, and social media and emerging technologies

Transformative intercultural pedagogies, trauma, peacebuilding, healing, justice, spirituality and human security, arts, Theatre of the Oppressed, Kenya, Somalia, Liberia, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Canada

Journalist and author

Rodney D. Sieh, is the editor and publisher of Liberia’s largest independent print and online daily, where groundbreaking reporting has brought down senior government figures and exposed corruption at all levels

Rodney was a 2016-2017 Gordon N. Fisher / JHR Fellow at Massey College, Toronto, Canada, part of the William Southam Journalism Fellowship. A graduate in media studies from Hunter College in New York City, Rodney has won a number of awards including Journalist of the Year and Media House of the Year in Liberia. In 2014, he was named by Reporters Without Borders as one of its 100 “Information Heroes”, and FrontPageAfrica received the TV5Monde Prize for Press Freedom. In 2019, he received the X-International Press Freedom Prize, presented in Malaga, Spain. Rodney is co-founder of New Narratives, the non-profit that supports investigative journalism at leading independent newsrooms in West Africa. New Narratives has been a key partner with FrontPage Africa in many of the media outlet’s biggest stories. One New Narratives/FrontPage Africa collaboration made reporter Mae Azango into an internationally renowned journalist. Her reporting on female genital mutilation brought global attention to the cruel ritual, eventually forcing the government to act.

University of Sheffield

Dis/misinformation, conspiracy theories, international broadcasting and political communication as well as journalistic practices in the post-socialist countries, Russia

CEO of the international communications agency, Kory Africa SA, Deputy Dean for Media Research at the Dortmund-based Africa Institute for Media, Migration and Development (AIMMAD), a Board Director and former CEO of the African Media Initiative, and a Senior Director at the Washington-based Greystone Global Strategies.

Journalism, economic development, policy and development communication strategy.

Director of the Colombian Institute of Studies of the Public Ministry, University of Oxford

Public innovation, education and participatory democracy, human rights, conflict transformation, social and political inclusion in post-conflict societies, Colombia and Latin America

Partner and Institutional Director and Strategic Alliances, Movilizatorio

Corporate social responsibility, public policies for peacebuilding, development, conflict resolution, transitional justice and demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) programs, Colombia and Latin America

Kennesaw State University’s School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding, and Development

Large-scale violence against civilians (including genocides and mass atrocities), emerging forms of warfare and violence, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and the Caribbean

Arkin University of Creative Arts and Design (ARUCAD)

Philosophy of communication, new capitalism and its relationship with communication, Emmanuel Levinas, history education, Cyprus

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

Media and journalists as memory agents in processes of dealing with the past, peacebuilding, transitional justice, Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Founder of NGO Attitude Change International

Peace and development, Peace education, Jammu and Kashmir

University of St Andrews

Ex-combatant reintegration, veterans’ politics, and youth as peacebuilding agents, Liberia

Department of Journalism, University of Sheffield.

Role of religious leaders in conflict resolution and the civil sphere.

Queen Mary University of London

Visual politics and practical aesthetics, Latin America & the Caribbean (Nicaragua, Colombia, Bolivia, the Anglophone Caribbean and Guyana), Indigenous peoples’ movements, the politics of resistance, sensory democracy, non-state actors, twinning and linking, friendship in IR, political street art, graffiti, art activism

University of Oxford and University of Johannesburg

Social media and conflict with a focus on the Horn of Africa, freedom of expression and media development