Middle East

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Bert Koenders

Head of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

Bernardo Monzani

Head of Research and Policy

Bernardo Venturi

ASSOCIATE

Celina Del Felice

COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER

Megan Gethin

Megan is an Irish citizen and holds a master’s degree in Religion, Conflict and Globalisation from the University of Groningen, Netherlands. There, she refined her research interests in peacebuilding, secularism, sociology of religion and conflict resolution. Prior to that, she studied at Queen’s University Belfast, and as a student volunteered in peacebuilding initiatives, in particular related to the Good Friday Agreement. She is particularly interested in the contributions made by religious actors and civil society organisations to sustainable peace and peacebuilding agreements. Megan has previously worked in events organisation and as a publications assistant with the European University Institute, and has worked in communication roles for research institutes and NGO’s such as Amnesty International Northern Ireland. She also has a background as an activist both in Ireland and Italy. 

Megan is AP’s Communication Officer.

Director

Mikhail Silvestro Sustersic

ADVISOR COUNCIL

Mariachiara Giaccai

SENIOR ADVISOR

Hashim Pondeza

SENIOR ADVISOR

Ylenia Rocchini

SENIOR ADVISOR

Alessandro Totoro

SENIOR ADVISOR

Anthony Sarota

ASSOCIATE

Valentina Bartolucci

ASSOCIATE

Stefano Marinelli

ADVISOR COUNCIL

Donata Garrasi

Donata Garrasi is a political scientist with 25 years’ experience leading research, policy, and programmatic initiatives on peace, security, and conflict related issues.

Between 2018-2021 Ms Garrasi served as Director of Political Affairs for the United Nations for which she led sensitive political engagements and peace initiatives in Africa’s Great Lakes sub-region. She previously held senior positions with the World Bank, the OECD, the UK Government, and consulting firms for which she developed and managed successful multi-million US$ engagements in support to peacebuilding, political transitions, and stabilisation operations in West, Central Southern and East Africa, the Middle East, Central and South-East Asia, and globally.

Ms Garrasi has collaborated extensively with financial institutions and multinational companies on issues related to natural resources management and investments in high risk and transitional contexts, contributing to enhancing due diligence processes and multi-stakeholders’ processes, and to preventing and addressing reputational, operational, and financial risks associated with terrorism financing, conflict minerals, and poor governance and security environments.

Ms Garrasi developed methodologies to conduct peace and conflict analysis, recovery and peacebuilding assessments, and conflict sensitive screening which are currently used by leading international and regional organisations. She has developed and delivered trainings on crisis management, political economy analysis in crisis affected situations, conflict prevention, and negotiation for senior-level political and development officials of the European Union, the World Bank, the UK Government, ECOWAS, and private sector partners.

A trained mediator, Ms Garrasi has been directly involved in negotiations in national and sub-national crisis contexts.

Ms Garrasi is an Italian national. She holds a MA in International relations from the University of Florence, Faculty of Political Science, and has completed executive programmes including with Yale School of Management and Harvard Kennedy School. She speaks English, French, and Spanish.

ADVISOR COUNCIL

Claudio Pezzi

Claudio Pezzi is a lawyer admitted to the Bologna Bar, managing partner of the law firm Pezzi & Associati based in Bologna, with an extensive experience in international law of commerce and private international law. Over the past years Claudio has developed a robust experience on entertainment Law and IP Rights, most notably in in the field of Copyright Law dealing with international clients in the area of digital copyright infringement and licensing of photographs, movies, music and videos.

In his practice Claudio dealt with international human rights cases and is a member of the International and human rights committee of the Bologna bar.

Claudio has a Master of Laws (LLM) in American Law and International Legal Practice from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, U.S.A.

He is a member of the International Committee of the Bologna Bar Association and founder and president of ILMA – International Law Meeting Association, a local association promoting the study of International Law.

As a member of Rotary International, over the past 10 years he has promoted, sponsored, introduced and obtained from the Rotary Foundation more than 15 post-graduate scholarships in the field of Peacebuilding.

ADVISOR COUNCIL

Debora Guidetti

Senior European Programme Manager, Ariadne – European Funders for Social Change and Human Rights Based in Brussels, Debora identifies trends and opportunities, promotes membership, and liaises with other funders’ networks. Debora has 15 years’ experience of professional and volunteer activities for foundations, NGOs and international organisations. Before joining Ariadne, she worked for a few years as an independent consultant. Previously, she managed the anti-discrimination work of the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) focusing on Western Europe for five years. From 2008 to 2011, she managed the European Programme for Integration and Migration (EPIM), a grant-making initiative of NEF. Formerly, she worked for UNESCO in Cuba and Mexico and for Handicap International Belgium. She studied international relations, political sciences, culture and development studies, in Italy (Padua), France (Sciences-Po Paris), and Belgium (University of Leuven).

ADVISOR COUNCIL

Tom Dewar

Tom Dewar is now affiliated with Nurture Development as a Senior Associate, as well as being an Emeritus faculty member with the Asset Based Community Development Institute. He was previously Co-Director of the Aspen Institute’s Roundtable on Community Change. He now lives in Bologna, Italy where he taught international and community development through the School for Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University (2001-2007), in Bologna.

From 1998-2001, he was director of Evaluation for the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago – his hometown. He continues to serve as a Senior Advisor to MacArthur in support of their Safety and Justice Initiative, a ten-year commitment to change the way jails are used (and mis-used) in the US. Prior to that he was Senior Project Associate at Rainbow Research in Minneapolis (1991-1997); where he worked with a variety of community-driven initiatives, non-profit organizations and community foundations across the U.S. to improve their effectiveness and impact. Before Rainbow, he was a long=time faculty member of the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where he taught and conducted action research (1974-1990).

His teaching, research, writing and public speaking have addressed a variety of topics, including especially the key challenges in community development, role of mutual aid and informal networks in community building, the social and economic organization of neighborhoods, achieving racial equity, and the dangers of an over-reliance on professional service delivery systems. He has led numerous evaluations that have focused on these topics, as well as on efforts to re-integrate formerly institutionalized (and other labeled) people into local communities, reform policy and practice in state level juvenile justice systems, provide employment and income for lower skilled and less experienced workers, improve the integration of school and work, carry out peacemaking and conflict mediation, strengthen sustainable agriculture, and promote strong and effective community organizing..

ADVISOR COUNCIL

Lamberto Zannier

Ambassador Lamberto Zannier is a High-Level Expert at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and has occupied this position since September 2020. He served as the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities from July 2017 until July 2020. Previously, he was OSCE Secretary General for two consecutive three-year terms, from 1 July 2011 until 30 June 2017. Other senior positions include UN Special Representative for Kosovo and Head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) from 2008 to 2011, with rank of UN Under-Secretary-General, Director of the Conflict Prevention Centre of the OSCE (2002-2006), Chairperson of the negotiations on the adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (1998-1999) and Head of Disarmament, Arms Control and Cooperative Security at NATO (1991-1997). Between 2006 and 2008 he served as Coordinator for CFSP and ESDP (now CSDP) in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dealing inter alia with EU foreign policy issues and with Italy’s participation in EU operations, both civilian and military.

Zannier joined the Italian Foreign Ministry as a career diplomat in 1978 and also served in Abu Dhabi, Vienna and The Hague, mainly specializing in multilateral and security affairs. From 1976 to 1977 he worked at the Legal Office of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome on issues related to international river basins and the shared use of internal waters.

Amb. Zannier is author of several publications on international affairs, conflict prevention and crisis management issues. Visiting Professor, University of Trento; member of Advisory Board, Italian Agency for Peacebuilding; former Director for Euro-Mediterranean Diplomacy and Intercultural Affairs, IFIMES Institute of research studies; former President of the Istituto per la Ricerca sul Negoziato, University of Gorizia.

He holds a Doctorate in Law, an advanced degree in international relations from Societa’ Italiana per le Organizzazioni Internazionali in Rome and an honorary doctorate in International and Diplomatic Sciences (2016) from the University of Trieste, Italy.

ADVISOR COUNCIL

Ivan Vejvoda

Ivan Vejvoda is a Permanent Fellow and Director Europe’s Futures project at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria.

From 2010 – 2017 he was Senior Vice President at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS) in Washington D.C. From 2003-2010 he was in Belgrade the Executive Director of the Balkan Trust for Democracy, a project of GMFUS supporting democratic initiatives and civil society. Vejvoda came to GMF in 2003 from distinguished service in the Serbian government as senior advisor on foreign policy and European integration to Prime Minister Zoran Djindjić. He was executive director of the Belgrade-based Fund for an Open Society from 1998 to 2002. During the mid-1990s, Mr. Vejvoda held various academic posts in the United Kingdom (University of Sussex) the US (Macalester and Smith Colleges). Ivan Vejvoda was involved in the democratic opposition movement in Yugoslavia through the 1980s and 1990s. A political scientist and political theorist he has published extensively on: democracy, totalitarianism, the French Revolution, comparative European politics, Balkans.

He was awarded the French National Order of Merit in the rank of Officer (2006) and the Italian Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity rank of commander (2007).

Associate

Huma Saeed

Huma is an affiliated senior researcher at the Leuven Institute of Criminology (KU Leuven) and an independent research consultant with national and international human rights and development organizations, including the Afghansitan Independent Human Rights Commission, GIZ, ECHO (European Commission), Alert International and other institutions. Her research area is human rights (with focus on women’s rights and Housing, Land and Property rights) and transitional justice with extensive fieldwork in Afghanistan. Previously she has worked with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Kabul as well as human rights and women’s rights organizations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and internationally. She has a PhD in criminology (KU Leuven), MA in human rights (LSE) and BA in Political Science (UMBC). She is the recipient of numerous academic awards, including the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation scholarship, and is a published author in a number of peer reviewed international academic journals.

SENIOR ADVISOR

Caterina Francesca Guidi

Economist and expert in migration and public health: her research interests are mainly concentrated on the impact of mobility and migration on European welfare and health systems. She also works on the organization of reception systems and integration of migrants in Europe. She is currently working as researcher at Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences at University of Siena as a member of the Inequality Lab (Laboratorio delle Diseguaglianze).
For seven years she has worked at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) of the European University Institute (EUI) as Research Fellow and Project Coordinator. She has also collected working experience with international organizations, other research centres and NGOs on policy analysis in Belgium, Canada, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia and Spain. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics by the University of Siena (Italy), a M.Sc. degree in Development Economics from the University of Florence (Italy) and a B.Sc. degree in Law and Economics from the University of Bologna (Italy). She is an active contributor and a peer reviewer for several journals and she has been invited as speaker and guest lecturer at different international conferences and universities.

SENIOR ADVISOR

Emiliano Alessandri

Emiliano Alessandri is AP’s Senior Advisor on International Partnerships and Global Outreach. He brings significant conflict-cycle expertise in key regions, from the Middle and North Africa (MENA) to Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Emiliano’s entire career has focused on conflict management and conflict resolution, drawing on a 15-year plus track record of working at the cusp of research and policy in the field of international security. He is a non-resident scholar with the Middle East Institute of Washington and a non-resident senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund. He is also the senior officer for the Mediterranean and MENA regions for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).