Project staff short biographies

Dr. Ekaterina Stepanova has been a Project Leader on Armed Conflicts and Conflict Management at SIPRI since 2007. She is the project's principal researcher on armed conflicts and transnational asymmetrical threats such as terrorism and transnational crime in conflict-related context and contributes a chapter on Trends in armed conflicts to the SIPRI Yearbook.
She serves on editorial boards of Terrorism and Political Violence (St Andrews Univ., UK) and Security Index (CREP, Geneva). In 2003, she worked as a Researcher on armed conflict and terrorism at SIPRI. In 1994-2000, she worked as a researcher at the Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She was twice a MacArthur Research Fellow (2003 and 2000), and a MacArthur NGO Fellow at King's College, University of London (1998). She has lectured on conflict, terrorism and transnational crime at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), the Department of World Politics, Moscow State University etc. She is on leave of absence from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), Moscow where she has led a Research group on unconventional security threats since 2001.
She is the author of Terrorism in Asymmetrical Conflict: Ideological and Structural Aspects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2008), The Role of Illicit Drug Business in the Political Economy of Conflicts and Terrorism (Moscow, 2005), Anti-terrorism and Peace-building During and After Conflict (Stockholm: SIPRI, 2003), and Civil-Military Relations In Operations Other Than War (Moscow: Human Rights Publ., 2001) and co-editor and co-author of Kosovo: International Aspects of the Crisis (Carnegie Moscow Center, 1999).

Sharon Wiharta has worked for the SIPRI Armed Conflicts and Conflict Management project and contributed to SIPRI Yearbook since 2002. She is the project's principal researcher on peace operations and transitional justice issues and contributes a chapter on peace operations to the SIPRI Yearbook. She is co-author of a practitioner's guide and a policy report, both entitled The Transition to a Just Order: Establishing Local Ownership after Conflict (Stockholm, 2007), with A.Hansen. Since March 2007, she heads a study on the effectiveness of the use of military assets in responses to natural disasters commissioned by UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Tim Foxley has been a Guest Researcher at SIPRI since October 2006. He is on sabbatical from his job at the UK Ministry of Defence. At SIPRI he is studying the current Afghanistan political and military situation (see Project Paper on the Taliban's propaganda activities in Afghanistan in Focus section). His analytical background includes Eastern Europe and the Balkans. As a senior research analyst at the UK Ministry of Defence he has been studying Afghanistan since late 2001. In 2006, he worked in Kabul in the ISAF Headquarters.

Kirsten Soder is a Research Associate with the SIPRI Armed Conflict and Conflict Management Project and has previously worked as a Research Assistant since 2006. She is a graduate in Psychology (Dipl.) from the University of Wuerzburg and student of the Master's programme in peace and conflict studies at the University of Marburg (Germany). She supports the research work of the project and operates the SIPRI Multilateral Peace Operations Database. She contributes Appendix 3A on Multilateral Peace Operations to the SIPRI Yearbook.

Ashley Dallman is an intern with the SIPRI Armed Conflicts and Conflict Management Project for the summer of 2008 as a participant in the Council of Women World Leaders' Fellowship Program. She holds a Master's degree in Social Work from Columbia University and received her BA from the University of Wisconson-Madison in Social Work and English Literature. She works on issues relating to gender-based violence, the impacts of vicarious trauma in times of conflict, and the role of narrative in the promotion of human rights and post-conflict reconciliation.