Our Advisors

Alison Blake is former Head of the Conflict Group in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. After an initial career as an archaeologist, Alison worked on conflict issues for most of her 20 years in the civil service. Following a period in the Ministry of Defence, and a posting to NATO during the IFOR/SFOR and Kosovo campaigns, she has worked on Balkans issues in the Foreign Office, covered US policy, Russia, OSCE and conflict resolution during a posting to Washington in 2001-5. Alison headed the Cabinet Office's Foreign Policy team for two years before taking up her post in the FCO's Conflict Group in September 2007. She has recently taken up a senior position at the British High Commission in Islamabad.
Kai Brand-Jacobsen is Director of the Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR) and the Institute's Peace Support Unit. With extensive experience in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South Eastern Europe, Kai has been invited to more than 48 countries as a trainer and mediator. He specializes in the design and development of peace processes and mediation, and is an expert advisor to governments, national and international organisations and UN agencies. Since 2001 Kai has focused extensively on the development of policies and infrastructure to enable effective peacebuilding, violence prevention and post-war recovery.
Jane Corbin was for many years the senior correspondent for Panorama, the BBC's flagship current affairs programme. She has covered the world's major conflicts for more than two decades and is known internationally as a commentator on the Middle East and terrorism. Jane is often invited to contribute in a number of high level policy arenas, and has briefed think-tanks, Parliamentary committees and the British government. She has excellent contacts all over the world at the highest government levels, with NGOs and at grass-roots level, and is the author of two books - Gaza First: an insider account of the Oslo process and The Base: al-Qaeda and the changing face of global terror. Jane is four times winner of the Royal Television Society Award and an Emmy nominee.
Dr Scilla Elworthy founded the Oxford Research Group in 1982 to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. In 2003 she founded Peace Direct, a charity that works to fund and promote peace-builders in conflict areas all over the world, and since 2005 she has been an adviser to The Elders initiative, assisting Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel and Desmond Tutu to convene a group of leaders to contribute their wisdom, independent leadership and integrity to tackling some of the world's toughest problems. In 2007 she was appointed a member of the World Future Council and also of the International Panel on Conflict Prevention and Global Security. Scilla has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize and was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003.
Simon Fisher has worked in many countries as adviser, facilitator, trainer and mediator with local and international agencies, with governments and at the UN. In 1991 he founded and became first director of Responding to Conflict, since when his priority has been to help develop and sustain active networks of committed peace workers at global and regional levels. Among his books are: Working with Conflict: skills and strategies for action, and Spirited Living: waging conflict, building peace. His current pre-occupation is to challenge the thinking amongst policy makers by getting the lessons from the conflict transformation field into their hands and minds.
Diana Francis is a former President of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and was for fifteen years Chair of the Committee for Conflict Transformation Support (CCTS) and co-editor of its quarterly Review. She is currently a member of the Quakers Naga Conciliation Group and an Associate of Conciliation Resources and Responding to Conflict.She is the author ofPeople, Peace and Power: Conflict Transformation in Action (2002),Rethinking War and Peace (2004), and From Pacification to Peacebuilding: A Call to Global Transformation (2010), as well as many chapters and articles.
Martin Griffiths was the founding Executive Director of the Henry Dunant Centre (formerly known as the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue)in Geneva from 1999 to July 2010. Before this, he worked in UNICEF in Asia, in the UKDiplomatic Service and in UK NGOs, latterly as Chief Executive of ActionAid. In 1994, he rejoined the United Nations (UN) as Director of the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (which became OCHA) in Geneva, and then from 1998 as Deputy to the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator in New York. During this period he also served as UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Great Lakes, and UN Regional Coordinator in the Balkans with the rank of UN Assistant Secretary-General.
Judith Large is Honorary Fellow at the Richardson Institute for Peace and Conflict Research (Lancaster University) and a practitioner currently working with UNDP on governance and conflict prevention issues. Previously she was based at CMI under Martti Ahtisaari, following three years at International IDEA in Stockholm. Her interests are conflict settlement and post-war recovery, most recently in Nepal and Aceh, Indonesia.
Professor Karl Mackie is Chief Executive of CEDR - the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution - and is internationally acknowledged as one of the leading practitioners in mediation; he has been described in The Lawyer magazine as one of the top 100 most influential lawyers in the UK. Karl has successfully mediated and facilitated a rich variety of cases with parties from over 20 different countries, including cases regarded as 'impossible' to settle. A barrister and psychologist by training, Karl has been a leading academic and a partner in a business strategy consultancy before helping found CEDR. The author of several books on mediation and legal skills, he has been awarded an Honorary Professorship from the University of Birmingham and is Visiting Professor of ADR at the University of Westminster.
Moazzam Malik has held a number of senior posts in the Department for International Development (DFID) and is currently Director for the Western Asia and Stabilisation Dvision. Before that he led efforts to reform the UN development and humanitarian system, to ensure rapid delivery of UK humanitarian assistance and work to reduce the impact of conflict and insecurity on poor people in developing countries. Moazzam has also been Head of DFID's Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department (CHASE), Principal Private Secretary to Secretary of State, Head of the Iraq Humanitarian Response Department, the Pakistan Programme Manager and Head of the Trade Policy and Promotion Team in International Economic Policy Department. He trained originally as an economist and has also worked for the National Development Finance Corporation in Pakistan, as an adviser to the Central Bank of Uganda, and as a consultant to the African Development Bank and European Commission.
Bill Marsh is one of Europe’s most experienced mediators and a regular advisor on mediation and conflict issues to a range of governments and international bodies, including the World Bank and the UN. Formerly a corporate lawyer, and full-time in mediation since 1991, Bill has mediated disputes involving parties from over 30 countries and is acknowledged as being in the top tier of UK mediators. He also writes and speaks widely on mediation and conflict issues, and is in demand as a trainer on mediation interventions and skills. He founded and chaired the Inter-Governmental Mediation Forum, is Director of Conflict Management International and is a Founder Member of Independent Mediators.
Professor Oliver Ramsbotham joined the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University in 1991 and became involved with the Centre for Conflict Resolution from 1992 as research director. His main interests are in the development of conflict resolution theory, especially in relation to the question of humanitarian intervention and humanitarian assistance to people who are victims of conflict; in the ethics of peace; and in the ideas and representations of peace and conflict in the main religious traditions (especially in Islam and Christianity). He is the author, with Tom Woodhouse of Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict (1996); The Crescent and the Cross: Muslim and Christian Approaches to War and Peace (1997); and Islam, Christianity and Humanitarian Intervention (1997).
Jango Sarosh is a recent President of Religions for Peace Europe, the European arm of the world's largest and most representative multi-religious organization dedicated to peace (the Archbishop of Canterbury is currently Co-President). A Zoroastrian born in India, Jango came to the UK by car in 1952. He served in the Royal Air Force, then worked in the civil aviation industry before starting his own business in 1968. He is a founder and executive member of the European Religious Leaders Council, was an executive member of the Inter-Faith Network of the UK from 1994 to 2006, and currently holds executive and trustee positions in several faith-related bodies and charities.
Dan Smith OBE has been the Secretary General of International Alert since 2003. Beforethen he held a number of senior positions, most notably as Director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, 1993-2001. He also held fellowships at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Hellenic Foundation for Foreign and European Policy, and was for over a decade the Chair of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Dan is a prolific author and continues to publish widely. At Alert he produced A Climate of Conflict (2007), the path-breakingreport on the links between climate change, peace and war and continues to lead the organisation's advocacy on a range of issues critical to the reduction of conflict and building of peace. He is also regularly invited to advise governments and international organisations on policies and structures for peacebuilding, including through his membership of the Advisory Group for the UN Peacebuilding Fund, of which he is Chair.
Sir Rupert Smith retired from the British Army in 2002. His last appointment was Deputy Supreme Commander Allied Powers Europe, 1998-2001, covering NATO's Balkan operations, including the Kosovo bombing, and the development of the European Defence and Security Identity. Prior to that he was the General Officer Commanding in Northern Ireland, 1996-1998; Commander UNPROFOR in Sarajevo, 1995; the Assistant Chief of Defence Staff for Operations, 1992-1994; and General Officer Commanding 1 (UK) Armoured Division, 1990-1992, including the Gulf War. He enlisted in 1962 and was commissioned into The Parachute Regiment in 1964. He has served in East and South Africa, Arabia, the Caribbean, Europe, and Malaysia. He is an Honorary Doctor of Surrey University and a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. His book The Utility of Force was published in September 2005.
Dr Steward Wood became a member of the House of Lords in November 2010 and attends the Shadow Cabinet as shadow minister without portfolio. His previous role was Communications Chief for Ed Miliband, Leader of the Opposition, and before that he was Senior Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street, covering foreign policy (Europe, USA and Latin America); and Culture, Media and Sport issues. He worked as a special adviser to Gordon Brown from 2001, serving for six years on the Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers. He studied as an undergraduate at Oxford University and did a PhD at Harvard University. Since 1996 he has been Fellow in Politics at Magdalen College, Oxford. His academic research focused on economic and social welfare policy in Europe and North America since 1945, as well as various issues in public policy in the UK. He was co-founder and co-director of Nexus, a think-tank set up in 1996 to link academics, policy experts and commentators with policy thinking inside the Labour Party.
Professor Tom Woodhouse joined Bradford University's pioneering Department of Peace Studies in 1974 as research assistant to Professor Adam Curle. He helped found the Centre for Conflict Resolution and served as the first Director from 1990-2000. His main interests are in the development of conflict resolution theory; peace education and training in conflict resolution; and the relevance of theory and education in guiding what Elise Boulding called 'peace praxis', the craft and skills of making peace. His publications include Peacemaking in a Troubled World (1990); Conflict Resolution and Active Mediation in the New World Order (1992); Peacekeeping and Peacemaking (1997); Negotiating a New Millenium Prospects for African Conflict Resolution (1996). In 1999 he was appointed to a personal chair as the country's first Adam Curle Professor of Conflict Resolution.

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