Fellows
Dr. Abdirashid Elmi ‘Ainan’ is an environmental policy fellow with HIPS. He is an Associate Professor at the College of Life Sciences at Kuwait University, having obtained his Ph.D. in Environmental Science from McGill University in Canada. He is the recipient of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s visiting scientist’s fellowship and is currently Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at Kuwait University. Dr. Elmi serves on the editorial boards of two international scientific journals and acts as a referee for a further ten. He has been invited as a keynote speaker to various global conferences and presented his research findings at more than 30 others.
Dr. Abdullahi Hussein has a Ph.D. in education from the University of London’s Institute of Education (now UCL). Dr. Hussein has published extensively, and in peer-reviewed journals, in the areas of impacts of wars on education, teacher development and the use of technology in education. Dr. Hussein’s recent publications include a book with the title ‘Freirian and Postcolonial Perspectives on The Development of ICT in HE’ and a book chapter on the ‘Impacts of wars on Curriculum and Medium of Instructions: Somali as a case study’.
Dr. Dominik Balthasar is a development policy fellow with the Heritage Institute. He currently holds a position with the Transatlantic Postdoctoral Fellowship for International Relations and Security, having worked in this capacity with Chatham House, the United States Institute of Peace, and the European Union Institute for Security Studies. Dominik’s work focuses on issues pertaining to conflict and state fragility, as well as international efforts towards state reconstruction and development, particularly in Somalia. Dominik has taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the School of Oriental and African Studies and has consulted with a number of international development organizations in Somalia and other g7+ countries.
Jason Mosley is a public policy fellow at Heritage Institute and an Associate Fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, and a Research Associate at the African Studies Centre of Oxford University. He is also the Managing Editor of the Journal of Eastern African Studies. Jason’s main geographical interests are in the greater Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes region, and Nigeria. He is interested in the politics of ethnicity, and of religion — particularly of Islam — in these and other areas. Jason regularly analyses the expanding economic horizons of Africa broadly speaking, and particularly in terms of the growing consumer base, and the investment opportunities outside traditional sectors of resource extraction and primary commodity production.
Dr. Laura Hammond is a development policy fellow with Heritage Institute and a senior lecturer at the University of London at SOAS. Her research interests include food security, conflict, forced migration, and diasporas. She has worked in the Horn of Africa for the past fifteen years and has done consultancy for a wide range of development and humanitarian organizations, including UNDP, USAID, Oxfam, Medécins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the World Food Programme. She is the author of “This Place Will Become Home: Refugee Repatriation to Ethiopia”
Prof. Abdulwahid Sheikhosman Qalinle is a legal policy fellow with the Heritage Institute and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Minnesota. Qalinle is a leading authority on the merger of Islamic law and the Anglo-Saxon legal system and a widely cited expert in the areas of Sharia, international law, comparative law and the rule of law. He’s the founding chair of the Somaliland Law Reform Commission, focusing the rule of law and transitional justice in post-conflict environments. In 2011, the Transitional Federal Government appointed him to the Select Technical Committee tasked with assisting the National Constituent Assembly to ratify the Draft Constitution. He obtained advanced degrees in Islamic Studies from the International Islamic University in Pakistan, and a law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School.
Bashir M. Sheikh-Ali is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies. He holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University in Washington DC and a Juris Doctor from Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta, GA. Bashir concentrates his legal practice on intellectual property litigation and procurement, corporate transactions, and trade. He has extensive compliance monitoring experience, including risk analysis and mitigation. Notably, he played an important role in monitoring trade practices of an international consortium of companies. His experience in trade law fuels his interest in issues related to trade blocs/free trade agreements and their impact on the cross-border movement of goods and services, tariffs, anti-dumping duties, foreign direct investments, and other capital movements.
Dr. Mohamed Kassim is a professor at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology. Mohamed has earned his Ph.D. from York University, Canada and taught African and world history at Brock University and the University of Toronto. His Ph.D. dissertation examines how Islam was understood, reproduced, and transformed in a small historic coastal town in Northeast Africa. In 2007, together with co-editor S. Vianello, their book Servants Of The Sharia: The Civil Register Of The Qadi’s Court Of Brava 1893-1900, was the winner of the 2007 Paul Hair Prize for the best critical edition or translation into English of primary source material on Africa at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting in New York. He has also acted as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the Canadian Forces College student presentations on North and Northeast Africa as part of Exercise Global Express for the Command and Staff Course. Mohamed has published in scholarly journals and has also written a variety of professional papers that he presented at several conferences and seminars.
Dr. Paul D. Williams is an Associate Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Dr. Williams is also a Non-Resident Senior Adviser at the International Peace Institute in New York where he oversees the Providing for Peacekeeping Project. From 2011 to 2014, Dr. Williams was a visiting professor at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University. He is the author or editor of thirteen books, including War and Conflict in Africa (2nded. 2016), Understanding Peacekeeping (2nd ed., 2010), and the Oxford Handbook on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (2015). He has also published numerous scholarly articles and policy reports analyzing various aspects of contemporary peace operations, including the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).
Dr. Ali A. Abdi is a professor of social development education at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Prior to that, he was a professor of international development education at the University of Alberta where he was also the founding co-director of the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research (CGCER). His research interests include development education, citizenship and human rights education, and decolonizing and Africanist knowledge systems. Dr. Abdi has degrees in sociology, political science and international development education.
Awalle Hussein, a human resources management fellow, is a lecturer at the School of Business Studies and Information Technology in the College of the North Atlantic, Qatar. Mr. Hussein teaches Human Resources Management. He holds a Master of Science in Global Human Resources Management from the University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK, a Bachelor of Management majoring in Human Resources Management and Industrial Relations from The University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada and a General Management Diploma from Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Peter W. Mackenzie is a Peacebuilding Fellow with 10 years of experience working in East Africa. Pete is the former Somalia Country Director for Saferworld. He is a widely-published writer and editor on a range of international affairs. He received a Master of Public Administration degree from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in Asian Studies from Williams College.
Ladan Affi is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Zayed University, UAE. Her research areas include women and politics; Diasporas and their impact on development, conflict and governance; and maritime security. She is a co-editor of Women and Peacebuilding in Africa (2021 James Currey), a comparative study of women and politics in five post-conflict African countries. She has also published in different academic journals such as Third World Quarterly, Journal of Somali Studies, African Security and Global Affairs. Currently, Ladan is working on research examining the impact of diasporas on governance in Somalia.
Dr Abdullahi Ali Mohamed is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Nottingham Malaysia (UNM). He has completed a Master of Science degree in Highway and Transportation Engineering from the University Putra Malaysia (UPM), Malaysia, and a PhD in Pavement and Transportation Engineering from the University of Science, Malaysia. With over 15 years of research experience, including as a Research Associate, Research Assistant, and Post-doctoral Researcher in the field of Transportation Engineering, Dr. Abdullahi Ali Mohamed has established himself as an accomplished researcher in his field. Additionally, he has taught courses in Railway Engineering, Pavement Engineering, and Sustainable Transportation planning, with a particular focus on sustainable transport planning and related areas. Dr Abdullahi’s research interests include the environmental impact of transportation, including the effect of transport on climate change. As a researcher, he has published over 40 papers in refereed journals and he presented his studies at international conferences, some of which have addressed topics related to sustainable transportation and climate change. He also serves as an international advisory board member for several universities in Somalia.