Deborah Alimi is a researcher in international relations, focused on governance, international development, and international strategies and policies regarding transnational organized crime and illicit practices.

A member of the European Center for Sociology and Political Science, she is pursuing a PhD in Political Science at Sorbonne. She analyses the evolutions and strategic reformulations of international drug policy and agenda.

Prior to her PhD, Deborah served as Policy Analyst in the OECD’s Network on Governance (GOVNET), focusing on anti-corruption and accountability. Before that, she was a research assistant on democratic governance and human rights issues for organisations such as UNPD and the Washington–based Centre for Development and Population Activities.

A French native, Deborah holds an MA in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., as well as a Maîtrise in Political Science from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris. She speaks English and Spanish, and has some knowledge of Russian. Deborah is based in Paris.

Ed Rackley is a security and governance adviser to leading multilateral and bilateral institutions (World Bank, UN, DFID, USAID...), as well as INGOs (MSF), with over 20 years living and working in conflict-related emergencies and fragile states, notably in the Horn, Great Lakes, Sahel and West Africa. He also has programming and research experience in LAC, Balkans and SE Asian transitional contexts. In 2008 he co-founded Prism Partnerships in Nairobi to support community-led reconstruction initiatives in conflict-affected areas of East and Central Africa. He speaks English, French, Kikongo and Lingala.

He holds doctoral and master’s degrees in political philosophy from the New School for Social Research, New York. His doctoral dissertation addressed the moral logic of humanitarian intervention, a critique of the humanitarian presumption that inaction before human atrocity amounts to complicity. He is a contributing author and co-editor of Catastrophe: Law, Politics and the Humanitarian Impulse (2009) and R.D. Congo: Silence, On Meurt (2002), and has published in Disasters, Multitudes, The Christian Science Monitor, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, Sustainable Security, and 3QuarksDaily. Ed is based in Washington, DC.

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Colin Scott is a Development Finance specialist, with over 30 of experience with development banks, UN agencies and international NGOs.

Until 2015, he was Lead Specialist in the Operations Risk Management team of the World Bank’s policy and country services vice presidency, where he specialised in environmental and social safeguards and was task leader of the Bank’s corporate review of safeguard policies. Prior to that he spent seven years in the Bank’s Middle East and North Africa region specialising in conflict-affected and fragile states, and leading the team producing a regional study, “Reducing Conflict Risk”. Prior, starting in 1996, he worked on social risk, conflict and development at the World Bank including six years as administrator of the Bank’s Post Conflict Fund.

Previously, he was a policy and communications consultant working on conflict and development issues for NGOs, UN agencies and independent institutions such as the Humanitarianism and War Project at Brown University. He served as senior press officer with Save the Children UK and managed its assistance programs in Mali, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Prior to that he worked in local government and the voluntary sector in the UK in social welfare policy, services and communications.

He has an MSc. in International Relations, an LLB in law, and a professional qualification in social work. Colin is based in Washington, DC.

Claudia Seymour is an applied researcher with 15 years of experience, working primarily in conflict-affected environments in sub-Saharan Africa.

Her research specialisations include youth, child protection, resilience to armed violence, humanitarian assistance, and security sector reform.

She has served with a range of UN bodies, including the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, UNICEF and the UN Group of Experts on the DRC and has led in-depth assessments, studies and evaluations for a variety of international and non-governmental organisations, in countries including Burundi, Central African Republic, DRC, Kenya and Liberia.

She is currently a Research Associate with the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and the Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

She holds a PhD in Development Studies from SOAS, and an MA in International Relations and Economics from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. Claudia is based in Geneva.

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