Our Advisory board

Our members include:

Julie Broome

Julie Broome is the Director of Ariadne, a network of European funders supporting social change and Human Rights. She has over 20 years of experience in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors, with a particular focus on human rights and transitional justice. She served as Director of Programmes at the Sigrid Rausing Trust, where she oversaw grantmaking to human rights organisations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas, and previously managed technical rule of law assistance programmes in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia with the CEELI Institute in Prague and the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex, an MA in International Studies from the University of Washington, and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. She has an interest in bridging research and practice and is currently the chair of the advisory board of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group.

Wale Osofisan

Wale Osofisan is senior director – Governance Technical Unit at the International Rescue Committee (IRC).  He leads the unit’s team of directors, senior advisers, technical advisers, and specialists overseeing program support to over 30 IRC country offices. Wale has over two decades of professional experience researching and working on governance, humanitarian, development, conflict prevention and the intersection between climate change, conflict, and displacement. Prior to joining the IRC, he worked with Plan UK, HelpAge International UK, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Nigeria in various roles from technical assistance to research and evidence, policy influencing and advocacy. Wale holds a PhD in Post-war Recovery Studies from the department of politics, university of York, UK. 

Thomas Leeper

Thomas J. Leeper is London-based research scientist in the tech industry and a Senior Visiting Fellow in Methodology in the Methodology Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he was formerly Associate Professor in Political Behaviour. His research focuses on social science methodology, especially survey, experimental, and computational methods. Much of his work has focused on political behaviour, political communication, and behavioural science broadly. His research has been published in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Experimental Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Political Behavior, Political Communication, and elsewhere, and he is the author of numerous software packages for R. He holds a PhD from Northwestern University.

Annemarie Naylor

Director of Innovation - Seetec Group. Her current role involves working closely with the Director of Strategy and Growth and Director of Policy, Communications and Public Affairs for one of the largest employee-owned providers of public services in the UK and Republic of Ireland which delivers services for, amongst others, the ESFA, DWP and MOJ.

After studying at the University of Essex to postgraduate level, her career began in the Civil Service, where she contributed to regional strategy development before taking up a stakeholder management and programme delivery role to improve the health, skills and employment prospects of deprived communities. Annemarie subsequently joined Locality, where she established the Asset Transfer Unit and assumed responsibility for national programmes to enable the transfer of publicly owned land and buildings to communities. Her work involved supporting the acquisition and development of broad-ranging assets in community hands – from castles and car parks to functioning hospitals and former MoD sites - culminating in receipt of an MBE for services to community asset ownership. Annemarie also established a national network for community managed libraries, undertaking primary research for Arts Council England about community involvement in library service delivery and income generation in public libraries, as well as for DEFRA concerning the future of rural libraries in England. On secondment to the Cabinet Office, Annemarie contributed to the work of its ICT Futures team, implementing spend controls in relation to the high level ICT procurement decisions that government departments need to make. She subsequently established Common Futures and supported an action-learning programme sponsored by MHCLG for digital asset and enterprise developers within the community sector, explored the scope to develop data cooperatives, and established the Common Libraries initiative as a test-bed for those involved in library service transformation - culminating in receipt of an international OuiShare Award and Honorary Doctorate from the University of Essex.

Mareike Schomerus

Dr Mareike Schomerus is Vice President at the Busara Center in Nairobi and Research Director of the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium at ODI in London. Prior to that she was ODI’s Director of Programme Politics and Governance. At Busara, she heads the Center’s work that links behavioural science, fragility and violent conflict (including the Atelier on Collaborative Transformation in Fragile Settings), as well as trust in authority and information for societal pandemic preparedness. She is a widely published researcher; her most recent work is The Lord’s Resistance Army: Violence and Peacemaking in Africa, Cambridge University Press 2021.

Adam Wright

Adam is Head of Public Policy at the British Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. He has had previous senior policy roles at the Royal Society and the National Union of Students. Adam completed his PhD at Essex in the Department of Government, and has published on a range of topics including education and skills, science and technology policy, democratic systems, and the research-policy nexus. He is also an external member of Council of the University of Essex and Chair of Governors at nearby Hazelmere Junior School.

Dr Comfort Ero

Dr Comfort Ero was appointed Crisis Group’s President & CEO in December 2021. She joined the organisation as West Africa Project Director in 2001 and rose to become Africa Program Director and then, in January 2021, Interim Vice President.

Dr Ero has spent her entire career working on or in conflict-affected countries. In between her two tenures at Crisis Group, she served as Deputy Africa Program Director for the International Centre for Transitional Justice (2008-2010) and, prior to that, Political Affairs Officer and Policy Advisor to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, UN Mission in Liberia (2004-2007). She has a PhD from the London School of Economics, University of London. Dr Ero is also the Chair of the Board of the Rift Valley Institute and sits on the editorial board of various journals, including International Peacekeeping.