People
Core Staff
Dr Tania Miletic
For the past 20 years Dr Tania Miletic has been engaged in policy-oriented research, peacebuilding practice, teaching post-graduate subjects in peace and conflict studies, and supporting actors engaged in peace processes in the Asia-Pacific region.
Tania is a Faculty member on the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Applied Conflict Transformation Studies PhD program and a former consultant to CPCS from 2006-2012. She has collaborated with Chinese academics in mainland China for over a decade in research and teaching on contemporary conflicts within China.
Dr Jasmine Westendorf
Jasmine's research focuses on peace and humanitarian processes, particularly examining how the international community supports societies as they respond to conflict and crisis. She is interested in the negotiation of power during these processes, the role of non-state actors and women, and how international actors’ assumptions and behaviours affect their capacity and credibility in the countries where they work.
Her current major project, funded by the Australian Research Council, focuses on sexual exploitation and abuse in peace and humanitarian operations; her past work has looked at the challenges to effective international involvement and inclusivity in peace processes.
Dr Niamatullah Ibrahimi
Dr. Niamatullah Ibrahimi is a Senior Research Fellow at the Initiative for Peacebuilding. He completed his PhD at The Australian National University in 2018 where his doctoral thesis examined the dynamics of contentious politics in the context of international intervention and statebulding in Afghanistan from 2001.
His research interests include terrorism and political violence, contentious politics, nationalism and ethnic politics, and post-conflict governance and security dynamics.
Dr Mujib Abid
Dr Mujib Abid is an Afghan-Australian scholar of modern Afghan history, peace studies and political theory. Mujib’s work foregrounds critical traditions that self-locate in the Global South, including postcolonial and decolonial approaches, as well as other traditional and Islamic knowledge perspectives.
Mujib’s PhD thesis interrogated Afghan encounters with colonial modernity, examining modernist power and politics of dissent in Afghanistan. The work is also an attempt at theorising embodied and representational agency against coloniality from the geohistorical location of Afghanistan.
Ella Reweti
Ella Reweti is a Research Development Officer in the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts, where she coordinates programs for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous Futures and the Initiative for Peacebuilding.
Board Members
Professor John Langmore AM
Professor John Langmore initiated the Initiative for Peacebuilding concept. Between 1963 and 1976 he worked in Papua New Guinea as a public servant and academic where he led the preparation of the first national plan. Between 1976 and 1984 he was an economic advisor to the Australian Labor Party and proposed the negotiation of the Accord. In 1984 he was elected as the Member for Fraser in the House of Representatives and was re-elected four times.
One of his achievements there was chairing the committee which planned the adoption of the first comprehensive committee system for the House of Representatives.
Professor Joseph Lo Bianco
Professor Joseph (Joe) Lo Bianco is professor emeritus in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. He is a specialist in bilingual education, literacy studies, and conflict mitigation with four decades of work in peacebuilding efforts in various South and Southeast Asian settings, especially Sri Lank, Myanmar, South Thailand and Malaysia. Prof Lo Bianco is series editor of Springer Language Policy books and has published over 40 books and major reports and more than 150 academic papers.
Joe leads the Initiative for Peacebuilding’s research on Peacebuilding and Language, focusing on issues of justice, communication and voice.
Ms Denise Nichols OAM
Denise Nichols has worked in international development, human rights, emergency response and disaster preparedness for over three decades.
She is a humanitarian specialist and practitioner with experience in refugee and post conflict environments in Asia and the Pacific especially in, Thailand, Myanmar, and Solomon Islands. She was deployed to Kosovo in the aftermath of the conflict working on peace building and recovery with women and people with disability. Denise previously worked with Oxfam Australia and other non-government international development organisations as well as AusAID (now DFAT) as an emergency manager, trainer, and as a disaster management advisor.
Research Associates
Dr Akuc Deng
Akuc Deng is a Research Assistant at the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Arts, working in the Initiative for Peacebuilding. She also holds positions as a Casual Academic and a Research Assistant at Deakin University. Akuc has a strong background in academic research and community engagement, having previously worked as a Community Researcher at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. There, she was involved in community-based projects aimed at improving the wellbeing of socially disadvantaged communities of migrant and refugee background. Her role involved rigorous research, data collection, data analysis, and report writing.
Akuc is in the final stages of her Ph.D. and holds a Master of Education, a Bachelor of Education, and a Bachelor of Arts (Australian Studies).
Mr Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai
Mr Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai is the former Chief Peace Negotiator of the Islamic Republic.
Prior to this role he served as Chief of NDS, Acting Minister of Defense, Head of the Joint Secretariat of High Peace Council, deputy to the Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration Commission DDR). In addition, he was responsible for the disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) and served as Minister of Telecommunication and initiated the public-private partnership. Before this, he served as the head of an NGO and also as one of the first members of the Human Rights Commission.
Dr Sophia Htwe
Dr Sophia Htwe is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Initiative for Peacebuilding, University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on peace and conflict, political legitimacy, civil society, sub-state governance, civilian protection, and ethnic politics, with a regional focus on Myanmar and Southeast Asia. Sophia completed her PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Melbourne in 2026. Her doctoral research examined civil society, conflict, and contested peacebuilding in Rakhine State, exploring how local civil society actors understand and pursue peace in the context of armed conflict and changing systems of governance.
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- Associate Professor Jennifer Balint, Dean, Faculty of Arts
- Professor Belinda Hewitt, Head of School, SSPS
- Professor Erika Feller AO, Professorial Fellow, Melbourne School of Government
- Amanda Gorely, former senior Australian diplomat
- Professor Adrian Little, Pro Vice Chancellor (International) and Professor of Political Theory
- John McCarthy AO, former senior Australian diplomat, analyst, and writer
- Associate Professor Tilman Ruff AO, Nossal Institute for Global Health
- Father Daniel Madigan SJ, Newman College, The University of Melbourne
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From the School of Social and Political Sciences:
- Professor Derek McDougall, Professorial Fellow, SSPS
- Dr Carla Winston, Lecturer in International Relations, SSPS
- Dr Rachael Diprose, Senior Lecturer in Indonesian Studies, SSPS
- Dr Anne Decobert, Lecturer in Development Studies, School of SSPS
- Dr Lesley Pruitt, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, SSPS
- Dr Nerkez Opacin, Teaching Associate, SSPS
- Professor Maria Rost Rublee, International Relations, SSPS
- Connor Clery, PhD candidate, SSPS
- Dr Claire Elder, Lecturer in International Relations, SSPS
- Dr Sara Meger, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, SSPS
- Dr Elaine Pratley, Initiative for Peacebuilding, SSPS
From the School of Languages and Linguistics:
- Dr Ali Albakaa, Honorary Fellow in the School of Languages and Linguistics
From outside the University of Melbourne:
- Ika Trijsburg, Director of Urban Analytics at the ANU Institute for Infrastructure in Society in the Crawford School for Public Policy and Head of Democracy and Diplomacy at Municipal Association of Victoria.
- Dr Siad Darwish, Environmental Peacebuilding and Gender Advisor
- Dr Dolly Kikon, Collaborator on Food Systems, Conflict and Peacebuilding
- Professor Sanjay Barbora, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
- Dr Anouk Ride, Independent Researcher, Solomon Islands
- Mr Soth Plai Ngarm, Research Affiliate
- Dr Michael Main, Research Affiliate, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University
- Dr Dan Evans, Research Affiliate, Senior Policy Analyst at the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue
- Atikah Nuraini, Research Affiliate, Pannasastra University
- Dr Srinjoy Bose, Associate Professor of International Relations (UNSW), Associate Editor of Australian Journal of International Affairs and Senior Fellow at Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute
- Nathan Shea, Assistant Director of Conflict and Fragility at The Asia Foundation
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- Sophia Htwe, whose research aims to develop a better understanding of the role of Myanmar’s civil society organisations in peacebuilding in the Rohingya conflict
- David Lozada is researching the social conflicts within and between social actors who mobilised against president Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’
- Syed Ali Akash, whose central research question examines the complementarity and incongruity between state-led and locally-driven approaches to peacebuilding
- Laura Raicu, who is is researching indigenous approaches to dealing with the psychosocial effects of violent conflict in Papua New Guinea and their impact on peacebuilding processes
- Talal Raza, who is a PhD candidate at the School of Social and Political Sciences. His PhD project focsues on the authoritarian use of digital technologies for political control in South Asia/Pakistan.