Ms Georgia Holmer is an Executive-in-Residence within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP. Georgia Papadopoulos Holmer has 25 years of experience in international security policy, research and practice. She has worked in a variety of capacities- as leader, advisor, facilitator, researcher, analyst and advocate - with governments, international organizations, NGOs, academia, and the private sector on issues related to the prevention of conflict and violent extremism, human rights and counterterrorism, and women peace & security. She is the former Head of the Action Against Terrorism Unit at the OSCE Secretariat and the former Director of CVE (counter violent extremism) at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). She has designed, led and evaluated capacity building programs to build peace and security on the ground in Nigeria, Kenya, the Balkans, Central Asia, and North Africa. She also served, with distinction, as an analyst for the FBI in international counterterrorism investigations for ten years in Athens, Copenhagen, and Washington, DC.
Ms Holmer has designed and taught curricula in critical thinking and creative approaches to understanding and addressing radicalization to violence. She holds graduate degrees in international human rights law from Oxford University and in international relations from Boston University and has published and presented widely. She is active in the promotion of women’s rights and the prevention of gender-based violence and serves on the advisory board of the NGO Women without Borders. Currently she is also affiliated with the Royal United Services Institute as a Senior Associate Fellow and the RESOLVE Research Advisory Council.
Ms Holmer is also a visual artist working in mixed media (https://gaiadelime.com). Her creative work explores issues of bodily and emotional autonomy, human dignity in life and death, and the nature of peace and violence. In her capacity as an Executive Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, she will be examining the intersection of creative processes, conflict transformation, and human rights.