Language: English

Dr. David Darchiashvili is a professor in international relations, history and regional studies at Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia. Until recently he was also a director of the Center for Russian Studies – a Georgian non-governmental think tank. Born in 1960, Darchiahsvili graduated from the history department of the Tbilisi State University in 1982. Defending two doctoral theses – one in History (1991) and another in Political science (2002), Darchiashvili had number of research fellowships: 2002-2003 Fulbright scholarship, at the Johns Hopkins University, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, US, being one of those.

Through years, he was a leading researcher at the Institute of Caucasus Studies of Peace, Democracy and Development, Tbilisi, Georgia, the head of the parliamentary research department, director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation. In 2008-2016 Darchiashvili was a member of the Georgian Parliament, focusing on legislative activity on the issues of European Integration and National Security. In 2010-2012 he was heading the Georgian delegation in the EU Eastern Partnership (Euronest) inter-parliamentary assembly.

David Darchiashvili authored and co-authored a number of books and academic articles on Georgia’s modern history, security problems and civil-military relations. Among those are:  “Georgia: The Search for the State Security”, Caucasus Working Papers, CISAC, Stanford University (1997); “Georgian Security Problems and Policies,” in The South Caucasus: A Challenge for the EU, Chaillot Papers, Institute for Security Studies (Paris, 2003); “Soviet Path Dependency as an Impediment of the Democratization in Georgia,” in Modernization in Georgia (Interdisciplinary Studies No. 18, Peter Lang, Bern, 2018); “Russo-Georgian War of August 2008 – Clash of Ideologies and National Projects in the Era of Hybrid Warfare,” Estonian Journal of Military Studies, 7 2018); Darchiashvili, David, Ronald Mangum, “Georgian Civil-Military Relations: Hostage to Confrontational Politics,” Caucasus Survey, Volume 7, Issue 1, 2019; Darchiashvili, D., and Grozovsky, B. “Georgia’s Backsliding from Democracy. Is the Russian Path Dependency on the rise?,” (Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy (2023); Darchiashvili, D., and Samarganishvili, Z., “Trajectory of Polish and Georgian National Projects: Case a for Comparative Nationalism Studies,” Ilia State University (2025) (in Georgian).

On various occasions, David Darchiashvili participated in networking with American, German, Finnish, Polish, British, Armenian, French and Austrian Universities and think-tanks.

Gen (rtd) Martin Luther Agwai CFR GCOR AFM NAM GSS is a retired four-star general of the Nigerian Army who served as Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Staff, holding Nigeria’s highest military appointments. He had a long and distinguished career spanning tactical, operational, and strategic leadership both in Nigeria and internationally, and is a committed advocate for peace, stability, and democratic values in Nigeria and across Africa.

During his military service, General Agwai held senior command, training and diplomatic roles, including Nigerian Defence Adviser covering Southern Africa (Harare, Zimbabwe), Director of Military Training at the Nigerian Defence Academy, Deputy Force Commander of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), and Deputy Military Adviser at UN Headquarters in New York. He also served as Force Commander of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) and became the first Joint Force Commander of the AU–UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), one of the largest peacekeeping missions of its time.

Following his retirement from active service, he has held academic and leadership positions, including Visiting Professor at the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London, and Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the University of Calabar. He currently serves as Director of the Olusegun Obasanjo Leadership Institute in Nigeria.

He is a graduate of the Nigerian Defence Academy, the British Army Staff College (Camberley), the U.S. Army Armor School, and the U.S. National Defense University in Washington, DC, where he earned a Master of Science in National Resource Strategy and was later inducted into the institution’s Hall of Fame. He is a recipient of numerous military, national and international honours, including Nigeria’s Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR) and a Sierra Leone National Honour the Grand Commander of the Order of the Rokel (GCOR).

Rocío San Miguel is a lawyer with postgraduate studies in security and defence, a human rights activist, and president of Control Ciudadano para la Seguridad, la Defensa y la Fuerza Armada Nacional, a Venezuelan armed-forces oversight organisation.

In public service in her country, she has worked as an analyst and researcher for the National Security and Defence Council, Legal Advisor to the National Borders Council, Director General of the Office of the Ministry of Infrastructure, and Associate Advisor to the Centre for Advanced Military Studies. 

San Miguel has been a professor of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights at Venezuela’s Naval War College, Air War College, and National Guard Military Academy. She has also taught Security Studies at the Universidad Metropolitana and lectured on the law of armed conflict at the Graduate Studies Centre of the Faculty of Legal and Political Sciences at the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

After two years of wrongful imprisonment (2024–2026), she is currently focused on the process of institutionalisation, coexistence, and democratic peace in Venezuela, developing proposals in the areas of security and human rights. 

Dr. Risa Brooks is the Allis-Chalmers Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, a Fellow in the Future Security program at New America, and a Non-Resident Senior Associate in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Her current research primarily focuses on U.S. and comparative civil-military relations in democratic states, security forces/sectors and contentious politics. She also maintains a longstanding interest in the armed forces of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and in armed forces in non-democracies. Most recently, much of her research focuses on the role of the armed forces in eroding democracies and explores both how political leaders implicate the military in anti-democratic initiatives and how militaries variously respond in ways that both advance and impede democratic regression. 

Dr. Brooks is the author and editor of several books, including “Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment” (Princeton University Press). Her research has also appeared in leading journals including International Security, Annual Review of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Security Studies, Armed Forces & Society, Journal of Strategic Studies, European Journal of International Security, and Journal of Global Security Studies. Her scholarship often aims to bridge regional and subfield divides, especially in the study of civil-military relations. Currently she is working on a co-edited volume that examines patterns of politicization of the military in nine democracies around the globe.  

Beyond academia, Dr. Brooks regularly speaks to audiences of practitioners, including military personnel from the U.S. and other militaries. She also engages with the public through podcasts, articles, and blog posts that have appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, Just Security, World Politics Review, Carnegie Middle East Center, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Her commentary on contemporary U.S. civil-military relations is regularly cited by journalists. 

Dr. Brooks received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego, and has held positions as Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and Senior Fellow at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Paula Cristina Roque is an author, researcher, and analyst with extensive expertise in human rights, security, and surveillance in Africa. She is the current Executive Director of Intel Watch and has served as an advisor on Sub-Saharan Africa for the Crisis Management Initiative as well as a Senior Analyst for Southern Africa with the International Crisis Group (ICG). 

Previously, she worked as a Senior External Advisor for the South Sudan-Centre for Strategic and Policy Studies and a Senior Researcher for the Institute for Security Studies (ISS). She has also served as the China in Africa Research Co-ordinator for the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIA), as a journalist in West Africa and the United Kingdom, and in 2020 founded a non-profit organisation Changes for Humanity that operates across the global South funding transformative community projects. 

Paula holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, a MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Social Anthropology from the Instituto Superior de Ciencias do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE).

Through her research and publications, Dr. Natalie Sambhi is committed to helping people gain a more nuanced understanding of Indonesian civil-military relations, Indonesian defence policy and Southeast Asian security. 

Natalie is Founder and Executive Director of Verve Research, an independent think tank focussed on the relationship between militaries and societies in Southeast Asia. Since 2020, she has been a Non-Resident Fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Program, where she publishes on Indonesian foreign and defence policy as well as Southeast Asian affairs. 

Natalie has a PhD from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, the Australian National University on the Indonesian military’s collective memory of its experiences in East Timor (1975–1999).

Natalie has previously been a Research Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre, and an Analyst and Managing Editor of ASPI’s blog, The Strategist at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). She has also worked at the Department of Defence and University of Canberra. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Asian Studies) (Hons) from the University of Western Australia and a Master of Arts (International Relations) and Master of Diplomacy from the Australian National University. In May 2014 and in January 2016, Natalie was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington, DC where she researched Indonesian civil–military relations. Natalie has previously been involved with the Australian Institute of International Affairs ACT, having served on council; the US-based Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) as a host of the podcast series Sea Control: Asia Pacific; and Bloggingheads.tv as a host for their international relations segment Foreign Entanglements. Her writing has appeared in Security Challenges journal, War On The Rocks, The Diplomat, The Interpreter and The National Interest.

Majak D’Agoôt is a veteran of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) war for independence of South Sudan where he rose from the ranks to hold higher echelon staff and command positions. He holds an MSc in Quantitative Finance and a PhD in Financial Economics from SOAS University of London. He also obtained an MSc in Security Sector Management from the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Cranfield University, and an MA in War Studies from King’s College London. He previously served as deputy chief of intelligence of Sudan and Defence minister of South Sudan.

He is currently a visiting senior research fellow with the African Leadership Centre at the School of Social Sciences and Public Policy of King’s College London and part of its senior leadership practitioners’ group. He also runs an independent think tank in Juba, South Sudan – the Changing Horizon Institute for Strategic Policy Analysis (CHI-SPA). His current research interest covers risk management, intelligence, irregular warfare (insurgency and counterinsurgency), and civil-military relations.

He has published articles in peer review journals such as Intelligence and National Security, Risk Research, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Defence and Security, Middle East Policy, Armed Forces & Society, and Political & Military Sociology.

Lt. Gen. Lazaro Kipkurui Sumbeiywo is a retired senior Kenyan military officer and internationally recognized peace mediator with over 35 years of distinguished service. He trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom and rose through the ranks to become Commander of the Kenya Army in 2000, marking a career characterized by professionalism, integrity, and exemplary leadership.

General Sumbeiywo is best known for his role as Chief Mediator in the Sudan Peace Process, where he helped reconcile the positions of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and the late Colonel John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). His efforts were instrumental in ending more than two decades of conflict and culminated in the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on January 9, 2005. He later contributed to the Agreement to Resolve the Crisis in South Sudan (ARCSS) in 2015, further reinforcing his role as a leading figure in regional peace diplomacy.

Beyond these landmark processes, General Sumbeiywo has continued to support peace and security initiatives across Africa as a trusted advisor on high-level mediation, civil–military relations, and post-conflict stabilization. He is a founding council member of the Nairobi-based Global Centre for Policy and Strategy (GLOCEPS) and serves in advisory capacities to organizations working on conflict resolution and regional security.

Widely regarded as one of Africa’s foremost military diplomats, General Sumbeiywo brings decades of experience bridging military leadership and diplomatic peacemaking.

Professor Baffour Agyeman-Duah has, since 2014, been the CEO of The John A. Kufuor Foundation, founded by a former President of the Republic of Ghana. Earlier, from 2008 to 2013, he was a Senior Special Advisor to the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and, from 2005 to 2008, the Senior Governance Advisor (UNDP) in Tanzania. 

He was Associate Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), an independent public policy think-tank, which he co-founded in 1998. He continues to serve on the Center’s Board of Governors. He was a member of the Governing Council of the University of Ghana, the country’s premier university, from 2017 to 2024.

He served in Liberia in 1977 and Nigeria in 1998-99 as Elections Technical Expert for the US-based National Democratic Institute. As Elections Consultant with the Commonwealth Office in London, he served in Zimbabwe (2000), Sierra Leone (2002) and Cameroon (2004).

Between 1999 and 2004, he was an adjunct faculty member of the African Center for Strategic Studies (U.S. Defense Department), and participated in the ACSS Senior Leadership Seminars in Senegal, Botswana, Ethiopia and Washington, DC. 

He studied at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana; Ohio University; and the Josef Korbel School of International Affairs, University of Denver, where he earned the PhD degree in 1984. Between 1985 and 1994 he taught at Bennett College and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, USA, and was a Fulbright Professor at the Legon Center for International Affairs, University of Ghana (1994-96). 

In addition to journal articles and book chapters, Prof. Agyeman-Duah has published monographs, edited two books including Ghana: Governance in the Fourth Republic (2008) and authored three books, United States and Ethiopia: Military Assistance and the Search for Security (1994); My Ghanaian Odyssey (2012); and General Acheampong: The Life and Times of Ghana’s Head of State (2021).

Dr. Daira Arana Aguilar is an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Social Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the area of Social Actors and Processes. She holds a PhD in Public Policy from the School of Government and Public Transformation at Tecnológico de Monterrey, an MA in International Affairs from Anáhuac University Mexico, and a BA in International Relations from UNAM. She is a graduate of the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defence Studies and a Fellow at the USMEX Center at University of California San Diego (2024–2025).

Her research focuses on the participation of the armed forces in public life in Latin America, human rights applicable to the use of force and International Humanitarian Law, as well as the application of gender perspectives and feminist approaches in the fields of security and defence.

She has worked at the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Executive Secretariat of Mexico’s National Public Security System, the civil society organisation Causa en Común, and the Mexico City Secretariat of Citizen Security. She has also served as a consultant for Amnesty International, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Equis Justice for Women, and other institutions, focusing her work on citizen security, the use of force, the involvement of the armed forces in public security and national security tasks, standards for the protection of individuals, and the inclusion of a gender perspective within the armed and security forces.

She is a lecturer at Anáhuac University and at the Ibero-American University, and an adjunct professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey. She also directs Global Though, a think tank on international affairs.