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. Denise has a long-standing interest in Myanmar since working as Burma Coordinator with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Bangkok in the mid-1990s. She was responsible for JRS’ humanitarian and advocacy response with communities in ethnic refugee and Burmese student camps on the Thai-Burma border and supported political asylum seekers in Bangkok following the 1988 uprising in Burma. In 1997 she interviewed Aung San Suu Kyi when briefly released from house arrest while the country was under military rule. The article about her views on humanitarian assistance was widely published at the time.

As a Practitioner Affiliate at the Initiative for Peacebuilding Denise specialises in Myanmar, creating spaces for confidential and public dialogue around conflict resolution in Myanmar, humanitarian assistance including Covid response, support for Independent Myanmar Media, building networks with the Myanmar diaspora in Australia and the wider Australian community.

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