International Development Department
School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham. B15 2TT
United Kingdom
+44 (0) 121 414 7291
www.ssrnetwork.ne
An Introduction to Security Sector Reform – 11-13 June 2007
Presenters’ Biographies
Hosted by the GFN-SSR, University of Birmingham at the Beeches Conference Centre, Birmingham
Bruce Baker is Professor of African Security at Coventry University, UK and Director of the African Studies Centre there. He is currently engaged in an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project examining informal and formal policing in post-conflict African states. He has conducted fieldwork in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde, Seychelles and Liberia. His published articles cover African democratisation, governance, policing, security sector reform, popular justice and informal justice.
Piet Biesheuvel has been the Police and Justice Adviser with the SSDAT since 2003. He previously served in a senior position in the Avon and Somerset Constabulary and has a wide range of developmental experience in the Police and Justice sector, especially in Sub Saharan Africa. Immediately prior to joining the SSDAT he was the DFID Programme Manager for the Malawi Safety Security and Access to Justice programme. He has now also brought his expertise to bear in South Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and South East Asia.
Jeremy Brickhill has extensive experience of conflict mitigation and management in Africa and has designed and managed DDR programmes in several countries. He is an active member of the African Security Sector Network and recently completed a DFID contract as security sector advisor in Sudan.
Stephen Fradley is a Prison Governor in HM Prison Service, currently the Deputy Governor of Her Majesty’s Prison Wandsworth in London, the largest prison in the United Kingdom with almost 1,500 prisoners. He served as a Regular Army officer in the infantry and Intelligence Corps before leaving to work in East Africa, after which he joined the Prison Service. Has also served as a Magistrate and has worked in a number of different prisons in the UK as well as having visited prisons in most areas of the world.
Stephen spent 12 months as the Senior Prisons and Criminal Justice Advisor with the British Embassy in Iraq in 2004-5 and is involved with reform programmes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is currently completing postgraduate research at Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology and is shortly due to start a new post as the Prison Advisor to the Caribbean.
Dr Paul Jackson is the Director of the GFN-SSR and the Director of the International Development Department, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham. Paul has over twelve years’ experience working in developing and post-conflict areas, including Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and the Caucasus, and has written widely on post-conflict political reconstruction, warlords, and governance and conflict.
Kate Joseph has worked as the Security Policy Adviser in DFID’s Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department since 2005. Prior to that she worked on arms control, armed violence reduction, and security and development for UNDP, the OSCE and a small transatlantic NGO.
Angus Morris is a former RAF pilot with a Masters Degree in Defence Studies who has worked as an SSR adviser within the SSDAT since 2001. He has held a number of important posts within his Service and the MOD where his last appointment was as Director Balkans. His project work with the Team has seen him active in Sub Saharan Africa, Latin America, South East Europe and Central and South Asia across a range of security sector actors.
John Parr is a civil servant working for the Ministry of Defence. He read War Studies at Sunderland and King’s College London and International Relations at Staffordshire and Corpus Christi College Cambridge. He also has a MBA from Surrey. He has recently been working on SSR in Uganda, Nepal, Lebanon, Jamaica and Guatemala.
Gordon Peake is an associate with the Libra Advisory Group. A former lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, his expertise lies in security sector reform and DDR; in the last year he has worked on projects in Jamaica, Nepal and Timor-Leste. He has published widely on aspects of police reform, security sector reform, and evaluation. He is co-editor of ‘Managing Insecurity: Field Experiences of Security Sector Reform’.
Simon Rynn is an Adviser on Security and Justice Sector Development at Saferworld. He supports the organisation’s work promoting more people-centred, accountable and conflict-sensitive SSR in South Asia, Europe and East Africa. He has a background with development organisations such as UNDP and War on Want. He also has previous experience in researching, designing and monitoring small arms control projects in East and South Eastern Europe in collaboration with national governments, international organisations and civil society actors.
Peter Wilson is Intelligence and Security Consultant at the Security Sector Development Advisory Team, where he has worked on reform of intelligence services, National Security Councils and Ministries of Interior in Iraq, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He started his career in the British Diplomatic Service and has also worked as a strategy consultant for McKinsey. He has an MBA from INSEAD and a Master’s in Economics from Oxford University, and is co-author of “Make Poverty Business”, published by Greenleaf in October 2006.
Mark White is DFID’s Security Sector Reform Adviser, a post he has held since December 2006. Prior to this posting he spent 2 years as the manager of DFID’s Security Sector Reform and Justice Sector Development programmes in Sierra Leone, during which time significant progress was made in concretely linking security sector reform to development through the Poverty Reduction Strategy process, and the transfer of ownership of key policy and financial decisions to the Sierra Leonean security sector institutions. In his position as Conflict Adviser for Central Asia, South Caucasus and Moldova, he has represented DFID in the past on the Russia/CIS Global Conflict Prevention Pool.
