Anna Matveeva

I am a Soviet Russian by birth and live in North London. Prior to settling in the UK, I graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the MoscowState University, did my PhD at the Institute of Oriental Studies, specialising in Afghanistan, and worked as a lecturer at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. In Britain I first worked as an academic at the London School of Economics International Relations Department, and subsequently moved into practical conflict resolution, taking a position as a head of the Former Soviet Union Programme at International Alert (IA), a UK NGO working on issues of conflict and peace globally. My focus at IA was on problem-solving between ethnic and political entrepreneurs in Dagestan, and I set up the first confidence-building process between Georgian and Abkhaz civil society actors. I then joined the policy world by taking an appointment at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, where my first major academic works were published: a short book on ‘The North Caucasus: Russia’s Fragile Borderlands’ and ‘Democratisation, Legitimacy and Political Change in Central Asia’ in International Affairs.

After that, I worked at Saferworld, which took me to the conflicts in the Balkans, and at UNDP, for whom I continue to work as a consultant. My consultancy career in conflict analysis and peacebuilding has taken me outside the former Soviet area to countries including Indonesia (Aceh), Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, China, Colombia and Ghana. 

I returned to academia to be an associate senior fellow at the Crisis States Research Centre at the Department of International Development of the LSE.

http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/staff/matveeva/biography/