Meet our team

Abida Pehlic is a human rights activist specialized in the prevention of human trafficking and gender-based violence. She holds a Master's Degree in Sociology and a Master's Degree in German Language and Literature. She is co-founder and President of the Association „Novi put“ based in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is also the GMMP (Global Media Monitoring Program) National Coordinator for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Abida has more than 25 years of work experience, mostly in international teams. She has developed and managed comprehensive programs and projects focused on the protection of human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, involving multiple governmental, non-governmental, and private sector stakeholders. Her research interests include human trafficking, gender-based violence, and gender portrayal in the media.

Daniel Ortega is a Sociologist who holds a Master's in Political Science from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. His research interests are armed conflict, peacebuilding, historical memory, and social movements. He has worked with a variety of civil society groups to strengthen social organizations and assist with the implementation of the Colombian Peace Accords. 

Edwin Cubillos is a human rights activist, photographer and cultural manager. He was professionally trained as a social worker and holds a master's degree in Cultural Studies from the Universidad Nacional. He has also taught courses on human rights in the Department of Social Work at the Universidad Nacional. Edwin was a researcher in the Communication, Culture and Citizenship Group and a member of the Communication Thinking Center of the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations (IEPRI), where he produced several publications and exhibitions related to photography, memory and human rights. He has worked as a National Project Advisor for the Ministry of Culture, Culture Manager for the Secretary of Culture of Bogota and Coordinator of Education and Culture of the National Museum of Memory (CNMH), directing projects of symbolic reparation from art throughout the country.

Eliza Urwin is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, where her research focuses on forms of cooperation and resistance in areas of conflict and contested authority. From 2013 until 2017 Eliza lived in Afghanistan, working as a Senior Program Officer for the United States Institute of Peace. There, she managed a portfolio of peacebuilding research and programming, piloting projects and exploring research methods for evaluating peacebuilding effectiveness. Eliza holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Paris, and a BA from Concordia University in Montreal and the American University in Cairo.

Fiorella Vera-Adrianzén is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Mexico and a Research Associate at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Her research examines how local politics and victim participation affect the implementation and effectiveness of post-conflict reparative justice. As an Inter-American Foundation and Fulbright-Hays Fellow, she has conducted participatory research within conflict-afflicted Quechua communities in Peru. She received a M.A. and a B.A. in Political Science from UNM and attended law school at the Peruvian Universidad Católica. She has worked with the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the NM Immigrant Law Center, and Catholic Charities, supporting immigrant communities.

Naomi Levy is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Santa Clara University and is the Director of Community Engaged Research at the Possibility Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Levy’s research centers on the relationships between ordinary citizens and the state. She employs community-based participatory methods to understand how the state can legitimize itself vis-à-vis the people and what might interrupt this process. With her work, she seeks to facilitate government responsiveness to community needs by amplifying the voices that are best placed to guide public servants. Levy received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and also holds an MA in Social Sciences of Education from Stanford University School of Education.

Dr. Jessica Smith is the Research and Policy Manager at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. Her research focuses on women’s experiences of agency in conflict-affected contexts, specifically how the principles of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda translate and become meaningful to local actors. She is interested in how EPI can be used to strengthen efforts to localize the WPS agenda. Jessica completed her PhD at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and has a decade of research experience working on gender-related issues with women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Indonesia, Jordan and the United States. She has worked in various capacities for the International Rescue Committee, Catholic Charities, the United Nations, the US Institute of Peace, and USAID. 

Dr. Julianne Funk is a Research Fellow at the South-East Europe Programme of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Greece. She has a PhD in Social Sciences and an MA in Conflict and Sustainable Peace from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Belgium. Bringing together peace research and peacebuilding praxis, Julianne has worked extensively with local organizations and projects in Yugoslavia’s successor states, writing, speaking and publishing about the successes of less visible initiatives. Her peace research and praxis is focuses on religions in conflict and peacebuilding (e.g. Balkan Islam, engaged Buddhism and various Christian traditions) and trauma-sensitive peace practices.

Kate Lonergan is a PhD Candidate with the Department of Peace and Conflict Research and the Hugo Valentin Centre at Uppsala University, and conducts research focused on reconciliation and peacebuilding after conflict and mass violence. Kate has a Master’s degree from the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, where she was a Rotary Peace Fellow. Kate has previously worked with the World Bank on justice and development issues, and conducted research on community reintegration of ex-combatants in northern Uganda. She has also worked with community conflict resolution and restorative justice initiatives in the Washington, DC area.

Dr. Leslie MacColman earned a PhD in Sociology & Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame in 2020 and is currently a post-doctoral scholar at the Ohio State University. Her research focuses on violence, policing, public sector corruption, and local dynamics of conflict and social change, particularly in Latin America. Leslie holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Spanish from the University of Montana - Missoula and an M.A. in International Relations, Peace, and Conflict Studies from the Universidad del Salvador - Argentina, where she was a Rotary Peace Fellow. She has also worked with numerous rights-based NGOs and development agencies, including ACIJ, FARN, ActionAid, FAO, and World Learning. 

Luisa Moreno Ome is a social worker with a community focus from the Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca University. She has training in Memories of Resistance, Communication for Social Change, and community filmmaking. She has more than 9 years of experience as an organizer and trainer in different processes of popular education, popular and community communication, and the creation of community and audiovisual cinema based on research, production and art direction. She is co-founder of the Narrar es Narrarse Memory Collective and is interested in the use of audiovisual art and creative writing to advance memory processes and psychosocial accompaniment of grief as forms of repair, healing and transformation.

Oscar Vargas is a researcher who works on memorialization, land conflicts and rural processes of land related issues. He has worked with state and private entities linked to transitional processes (Land Restitution Unit, Historical Memory Center), clarification of rural land issues (National Land Agency) and university education (Universidad de la Sabana). He holds a Master's degree in Anthropology and a Bachelor's degree in History from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Rosario Arias Callejas is a historian from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She has accompanied projects and research in collective memory, oral history, life histories and social movement archives. She has worked on projects related to peacebuilding, land and development, culture, human rights and knowledge management.  She holds a Master's degree in Social Studies from the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional and a Master's degree in Historical Archiving and Memory from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. She has been accompanying EPI's projects in Colombia since 2016.

Shruthi De Visser has worked in both the government and non-profit sector as a researcher, activist and consultant, focusing on reconciliation, gender and politics. Shruthi has a Bachelor's in Political Science from Gordon College in the United States and a Master's in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Shruthi‘s research is focused on peacebuilding and transitional justice, specifically reparations. Her more recent research work has centered on the formal political experiences of Tamil women in Northern Sri Lanka. Shruthi is especially interested in using an intersectional lens with a focus on gender in all her research work.

Sol Rivera is a sociologist from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia with expertise in gender and feminist studies. She has been a researcher at various institutions, such as the National Center for Historical Memory, the Truth Commission, and a variety of other civil society organizations. Sol has conducted research on the history of Colombian guerrillas, paramilitarism, the relationship between art and politics, and human rights in Colombia. She has experience in projects related to historical memory, political participation, and the implementation of the Peace Accords in Colombia. Sol is interested in the construction of historical memory through art and culture, research on the Colombian armed conflict, and peacebuilding.

Dr. Tiffany Fairey is a visual sociologist and Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow based in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Co-Founder of the award-winning charity PhotoVoice, Fairey has over 20 years of experience working on participatory photography and photovoice projects around the world. She is a specialist in participatory visual methods and community photography histories, pedagogies, ethics and impact. Her current research, Imaging Peace, focuses on the role of images and image-making in building peace and dialogue. In recent years she has worked on the major interdisciplinary research project Art & Reconciliation and Izazov, a Changing the Story project with young Bosnian film-makers. In 2019 she co-edited a Special Issue of the journal Photography & Culture, Photography As Dialogue. Her work has been recognized with various awards including the Royal Photographic Society’s Hood Medal for outstanding advance in photography for public service (2010). 

Zahrah Rizwan is a feminist researcher with a background in advocacy and communications in the non-profit sector of Sri Lanka. She functions as an Advisor at FRIDA, the Feminist Fund; and is a part of local youth activist groups such as Hashtag Generation and Sisterhood Initiative. Zahrah holds a B.A. (Hons) at the University of Colombo and a Bachelors in Business, Australia; and is currently pursuing her Master's in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Colombo. Her research focuses on using an intersectional lens to explore sex work, night economies, violence and mental health in Sri Lanka.