Dr Alex Vines OBE

Alex Vines is an Assistant Professor and lectures on African peace and security and politics.

He also directs the Africa Programme at Chatham House is its managing director for risk, ethics and resilience. Alex chaired the UN Panel of Experts on Côte d’Ivoire from 2005 to 2007 and was a member of the UN Panel of Experts on Liberia from 2001 to 2003. He was also a member of the Commonwealth Observer Group to Mozambique in 2019 (and Ghana in 2016) and worked for UNOMOZ (1994) and UNAVEM II (1992).

He worked at Human Rights Watch as a senior researcher on its Africa, Arms and Business and Human Rights programmes, and has served as a consultant including for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC); JICA, DFID, USAID, the EU and for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

He has also written expert reports for the EU parliament and has testified to law makers including for the US Congress and Senate, the EU parliament, the UK and Finnish parliaments and the Angolan and Mozambican National Assemblies.

He is regularly cited by the media and widely published and sits on the editorial and advisory Boards for the South African Journal of International Affairs, Africa Review (journal of the African Studies Association of India), and the Journal of Southern African Studies. He is also a director of EG Justice – an NGO focused on Equatorial Guinea and is on the advisory board of the John & Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies (JEFCAS) at the University of Bradford.

Alex was awarded an OBE in 2008 in recognition of his Africa work including founding and developing Chatham House’s Africa programme and holds a PhD from Coventry University and an MA and BA Hons from York University.