The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers

After an earlier career in business and journalism, I worked for the UN for two decades in peacekeeping, political, and humanitarian missions in some of the world’s toughest zones, deploying strategic communications to resolve hostage, political, and public diplomatic crises. I began my international public service work with the OSCE in 1997, and then managed large teams for the UN in Bosnia and Kosovo, before I was relocated for a year to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the days immediately following 9/11. As UNICEF's Chief of Emergency Communications based in New York, I dealt with a full range of complex development, emergency, aid and security issues, with boots-on-the-ground in a variety of theatres of conflict and natural disaster in Africa, India, former Soviet Central Asia, the Western Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. From 2015 to 2018, I headed global comms for UN-Habitat, based in Kenya. Between UN engagements I was a visiting scholar at Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (department of Political Science), and a research professor at Griffith University’s Asia Institute (department of Government). I was a joint founder of the International Crimes Evidence Project, and a director for ActionAid Australia. I lived for extended periods in New York, Ashgabat, London, Prishtina, Colombo, Sydney, Barcelona, Sarajevo, Tokyo, Nairobi, Luanda, and Islamabad, and I am a Senior Fellow of the ARTIS International group, applying research and social science insights to a range of policy, stability, and human development issues including terrorism and radicalisation. I currently live between Prague and the port of Newcastle, Australia.