Staff and Consultants
John Sloboda
John Sloboda is Consultant and Director of Oxford Research Group's Recording Casualties in Armed Conflict programme and chairs its International Advisory Group. From 2004 to 2009 he was Executive Director of ORG. Some concluding remarks on his six years in this role may be downloaded here. He is also Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Keele, and an Honorary Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. Since 2003, he has been co-director of the Iraq Body Count project, which remains the only continuously updated source of event-based information about civilian casualties in the ongoing Iraq conflict. He undertakes regular speaking engagements, and is an occasional author for openDemocracy. In July 2004, John was elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy.
Paul Rogers
Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, and Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group. Professor Rogers has worked in the field of international security, arms control and political violence for over 30 years. He lectures at universities and defence colleges in several countries and has written or edited 26 books, including Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Power and the Illusion of Control (Routledge, 2008) and Why We're Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2008). He writes monthly briefings analysing the international security situation for the Oxford Research Group website and since October 2001 has written a series of ORG Briefing Papers on international security and the 'war on terror', including Endless War: The Global War on Terror and the New Bush Administration (March 2005) and Iran: Consequences of a War (February 2006). Paul is also a regular commentator on global security issues in both the national and international media, and is openDemocracy’s International Security Editor.
Gabrielle Rifkind
Gabrielle Rifkind is Oxford Research Group Director of the Human Security in the Middle East programme. She is a group analyst and specialist in conflict resolution and is convener and founder of the Middle East Policy Initiative Forum (MEPIF). She has initiated and facilitated a number of Track II roundtables and hosts the media 'Liddite' Conversations with ORG. She is also working on developing dialogue between Iran, the US and Israel. She makes regular contributions to press and media and is author, with Scilla Elworthy, of Making Terrorism History (Random House, 2005).
Chris Langdon
Chris Langdon is Oxford Research Group's Managing Director. From 1997-2008 he was a Programme Director at the Wilton Park conference centre where he ran their South East Europe programme. He is currently directing the "Communicating Europe project for the independent think-tank, the European Stability Initiative. It brings policy-makers and TV editors from the Western Balkans working on EU integration to EU capitals to engage with decision-makers. Chris has also worked as a TV producer and researcher for the BBC and ITV for 16 years. He was senior producer responsible for BBC TV News coverage of the 1989 Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution. He is still active in media work; working on media development projects. He directed two ESI documentaries covering human security issues; one in Bosnia funded by DFID, and one on Kosovo supported by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.
Dr. Refqa Abu-Remaileh
Refqa Abu-Remaileh is Project Manager for ORG's Human Security in the Middle East Programme. She works primarily with the Palestinian Strategy Group and Israeli Strategic Forum and recently completed a PhD in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford.
Hamit Dardagan
Hamit Dardagan became ORG’s Consultant on Civilian Casualties in War in March 2007. He is co-founder and principal researcher at Iraq Body Count (IBC), where he has taken the lead on the development of IBC's analytic tools and ouputs.. He has written for Counterpunch, and has undertaken research for a number of organisations, including Greenpeace. He has been chair of Kalayaan a human rights campaign for overseas domestic workers in the UK, which led to significant enhancement in their legal rights.
Benjamin Zala
Ben Zala is the Manager of the Sustainable Security Programme at ORG. He is also a PhD candidate in International Relations and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Birmingham and holds a Bachelor of International Relations with first class honours from La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has previously worked at Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) in the Energy, Environment and Development Programme and the La Trobe University Centre for Dialogue where he was also the editorial assistant for the scholarly journal Global Change, Peace and Security. He has also previously worked for the Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia). He has worked on security issues for a number of years and has published and spoken at conferences on issues of nuclear proliferation, arms control and disarmament and multilateral institutions.
Rachel Joyce
Rachel Joyce joined the Oxford Research Group as an intern in April, working largely within the legal project of the Recording Casualties of Armed Conflict programme. Rachel graduated with distinction from King's College, London, in January 2010 with an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice. She received the ICPR Prize for Best Dissertation 2008/2009 for her paper "The Causational Factors of Detainee Abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison." Her main interests are state crime, mass atrocity, human rights and dehumanisation. Concurrently to her work at ORG, she is involved as a researcher, online communications officer and advocacy project coordinator with the Tamil Information Centre and its sister branch, the Tamil Women's Development Forum. Rachel will begin an MPhil in King's College in September 2010. She also holds a Bachelor's degree in Civil Law from the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Ed Wilcox
Ed Wilcox is an intern with the Sustainable Security Programme at ORG. He works across a number of projects and is Co-editor of sustainablesecurity.org. Ed is also a Training and Consultancy Assistant at the British Institute of Human Rights, an independent charity based in London. He has studied at the Universities of Manchester and Nottingham and the United Nations University in Tokyo and holds degrees in Psychology (with Honours) and Diplomacy (with Distinction). He also taught English in rural Japan for two years, as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme.
Elizabeth Minor
Elizabeth Minor is the Recording Casualties of Armed Conflict programme’s Researcher. She first joined Oxford Research Group as an intern in 2009 during which time she oversaw the inauguration of the practitioner network. She has since worked as a Researcher for Iraq Body Count. She holds an MSc in Comparative Politics, Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science; her dissertation examined the transitional justice goals attached to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. She also holds a first class degree in History from University College London. Elizabeth also works at a homeless women’s hostel and voluntarily with asylum seekers.
