Senior Conflict Prevention Advisor, and Head of the Conflict Prevention Group, with the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery of the UN Development Programme (UNDP)

His current work focuses on building national and local capacities, as part of development assistance, for the prevention and resolution of violent conflict or potentially violent tensions, and for the constructive management of diversity or rapid change. Between 2003 and 2009, he has provided significant assistance for the development and implementation of such initiatives in twenty-one countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, and the South Pacific regions, with results including the successful prevention of elections-related violence in seven instances, and the reduction of potentially violent tensions or the launch of sustained dialogue efforts in eleven others.

He also manages a joint initiative of UNDP and the Department of Political Affairs—the Joint Programme on Building National Capacities for Conflict Prevention—first initiated in 2004. Prior to joining UNDP, he had worked for the Office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict; the International Peace Academy (now the International Peace Institute) in New York; and the Programme in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security at the University of Illinois.

He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and has authored several publications on issues pertaining to conflict prevention and peace-building. He is the co-editor, with Marvin Weinbaum and Elizabeth Cousens respectively, of South Asia Approaches the Millennium: Re-examining National Security (Westview, 1995) and Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies (Lynne Rienner, 2000).