Webinar – Localising conflict research: lessons from XCEPT

Azeema Cheema, Verso Consulting

Azeema Cheema is a Founding Director at Verso Consulting where she leads the portfolio on Conflict, Fragility and Violence. Azeema has fifteen years of development sector experience. In addition to long-term positions with ADB and IRI, she has consulted for a range of multilateral, bilateral, and civil society organisations. She specialises in applied political economy and conflict sensitivity for complex programs. As a co-creator of the Mass Anxieties Project Azeema focuses on the discourse of violence and non-violence in social movements and developing communications frameworks to assist peace building. She has previously served as a Visiting Faculty member in public policy at the National Defence University and presently at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. Azeema is a Research Lead for XCEPT, and currently leads research in Pakistan under the X-Border Local Research Network on fragility in local market systems and conflict dynamics  in borderland communities along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. 

Ikal Ang’elei, Friends of Lake Turkana

Ikal is an environmental activist. She is co-founder and Director of Friends of Lake Turkana, a grassroots organisation that seeks to foster social, economic and environmental justice in the Lake Turkana Basin. Ikal completed a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Political Science at Stony Brook University in New York. In 2012 she was awarded with the Goldman Environmental Prize, particularly for her voicing on behalf of Northern Kenyan indigenous communities about the environmental implications of the Gilgel Gibe III Dam. 

Ilyssa Yahmi, XCEPT Women Researchers Fellow

Ilyssa Yahmi is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Temple University and a 2024-2025 USIP-Minerva Peace and Security Scholar. She is also a research fellow of the Cross-Border Conflict, Evidence, Policy, Trends Programme (XCEPT), a visiting scholar at the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF), and a Fulbright scholar. Her stream of research investigates non-traditional security issues related to borders, political violence, and identity, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. To that end, she has conducted field research in Mali, Algeria, and France. Ilyssa received her MA in International Security from the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po (Paris, France), and a Master’s Certificate in National Defense and Security from the French Institute of Higher Studies in National Defense (IHEDN).  

Joseph Diing Majok, Rift Valley Institute

Joseph Diing Majok is a national research consultant with the Rift Valley Institute (RVI). He has been with the RVI since 2017 as research assistant and later as part of Xcept local research network and the RVI national researchers’ team. Majok was involved in numerous projects and extensively in the FCDO’s XCEPT consortium project where he co-authored and independently written several reports, policy briefs and blogs on cross border livelihoods, labour migration and militarization.  

Nathan Shea, The Asia Foundation

Nathan Shea is Assistant Director of The Asia Foundation’s Conflict & Fragility unit. He has over ten years’ experience working on conflict, peacebuilding, violent extremism and development research and programming across South and Southeast Asia. He’s authored numerous book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles and reports, including on the peace processes in Aceh, Indonesia and in Mindanao, the Philippines.  He holds a Master of International Relations from the University of Melbourne.

Nathan is Programme Manager of the X-Border Local Research Network.