Farida Akram Mostafa
Farida Akram Mostafa
Farida Akram Mostafa
Queering Atrocity Prevention Coordinator
Andy Fearn
Farida Akram Mostafa
Farida Akram Mostafa
Co-Executive Director and Head of Learning and Outreach
Dr Jess Gifkins
Dr Kate Ferguson
Dr Kate Ferguson
Queering Atrocity Prevention Research Fellow
Dr Kate Ferguson
Dr Kate Ferguson
Dr Kate Ferguson
Co-Executive Director and Head of Research and Policy
Safia Mizon Thioune
Safia Mizon Thioune
Safia Mizon Thioune
Stronger Communities Senior Policy and Research Officer
Farida Akram Mostafa
Queering Atrocity Prevention Coordinator
Farida manages and coordinates Protection Approaches’ Queering Atrocity Prevention programme, looking at LGBTQI+ groups’ unique risks and vulnerabilities to mass atrocities and the ways in which programmatic interventions and risk frameworks can respond to them efficiently and swiftly, in pursuit of safer and more inclusive societies. In her work, she engages a wide variety of stakeholders to ensure cross-sector commitments to centring LGBTQI+ groups in atrocity prevention efforts.
Farida has previously worked with Doria Feminist Fund on supporting women’s rights and LGBTQI+ rights groups in the MENA region and ensuring that they have access to more and better resources to support their human rights work and their communities. She has a background in journalism where she focused on LGBTQI+ rights and freedom of speech in the MENA region, as well as youth initiatives. Farida holds a BA in Anthropology from the American University in Cairo and an MA in Human Rights from University College London. She was born and raised in Egypt.
“Queer populations around the world face unique risks of mass atrocities based on their identities, yet programmatic interventions and conversations on atrocity prevention often overlook their experiences, their needs and the factors that make them more vulnerable to violence. I believe that all atrocity and conflict prevention frameworks must account for and respond to these risks if they are to contribute to more just, peaceful, inclusive and equitable societies that leave no one behind."
Andy Fearn
Co-Executive Director, Head of Learning and Outreach
Andy heads our UK Stronger Communities programmes and works with schools, young people, marginalised communities, civil society organisations, and local and national decision makers, to increase understanding of the processes that lead to prejudice, marginalisation and identity-based violence, and to strengthen local and national responses. Andy also leads on managing MEL and Operations.
Andy has more than a decade of experience working with communities to build community resilience and supporting individuals to develop the practical skills, knowledge, confidence, and networks to positively and sustainably confront prejudice and hate. This includes designing and co-leading national cohesion building projects in Rwanda funded by DfID, as well as delivering community-based hate prevention programmes in London with the UK Home Office. Andy holds and MA in Human Rights from Kingston University, London.
“Creating a just and equitable world is the responsibility of all of us and with greater privilege comes greater responsibility.”
Detmer Kremer
Policy and Communications Officer
Detmer Kremer is supporting national and international atrocity prevention research and policy and coordinates Protection Approaches’ convening of the UK Atrocity Prevention Working Group. He also oversees our communications – from social media to press.
Detmer has worked on and supported rights-based climate action and Indigenous liberation in Samoa, Turtle Island (United States), Singapore, and at the United Nations. He has additional experience in housing justice, LGBTQ+ rights and sexual violence prevention, which are intersections as a queer person and survivor himself Detmer brings to his work. Detmer holds a BA in Anthropology from Bates College and a MA in Human Rights from University College London.
“Climate change is a symptom of how many of us choose to live on the planet, and while climate change impacts us all, it disproportionately does so to communities already experiencing exclusion and marginalisation. In the climate field I noticed a need to better understand what violence is, how it is connected to changes like ecosystem collapse, and how we prevent it. Protection Approaches has always sought to change how we think about and prevent identity-based violence, a conversation any climate activist should wish to be a part of.”
Dilia Zwart
Futures of Education Research Fellow
Dilia Zwart is advising the PA team and contributing to our education programme. She managed PA's education programme from 2019-2021 and authored our report 'Building stronger communities through critical and compassionate schooling.'
She has nearly ten years of experience managing education programmes and researching how educational systems can create more inclusive, democratic, and peaceful societies. She has worked on peacebuilding and atrocity prevention in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In September 2021 she began a PhD in International Education at New York University. Dilia holds a BA in Social Anthropology from Harvard University and an MA in International Studies and Diplomacy from SOAS, University of London.
“Schools are communities and can play a key role in inspiring young people to be positive changemakers. During one of our education programme's focus groups on the future of education in 2020, students said they wanted their schools ‘To teach the future [generations] how to respect themselves and others [and] to care for a world that is constantly changing.’ Centring youth voices and ensuring that they have the tools they need to care for themselves, others, and the planet is at the heart of building stronger communities resilient to identity-based violence.”
Dr Jess Gifkins
Queering Atrocity Prevention Research Fellow
Jess works with Protection Approaches on queering atrocity prevention. In this project we are researching atrocity prevention with an LGBTQI+ lens. There are specific forms of persecution of LGBTQI+ people which are often overlooked when thinking about identity-based violence from the perspective of ethnic or religious minorities. We aim to bring together communities and organisations working on atrocity prevention with those working on LGBTQI+ rights.
Jess is a queer academic at the University of Manchester where she researches atrocity prevention and United Nations decision-making processes. She has over a decade of experience working on atrocity prevention, starting with her PhD within the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, in Brisbane Australia. Jess has published widely in academic journals and her research has been featured in the Guardian and the Economist. At the University of Manchester, she leads modules on the United Nations at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her forthcoming monograph Inside the UN Security Council: Legitimation Practices and Darfur will be published by Oxford University Press
“We know that LGBTQI+ people have been specifically targeted as part of mass atrocity crimes as far back as the Holocaust and yet modern approaches to atrocity prevention – as envisaged through the principle of the responsibility to protect – have largely neglected the persecution of queer people. The current backlash against LGBTQI+ rights in many parts of the world makes this all the more important, as does the current culture war against queer, and particularly trans, people in the UK.”
Dr Kate Ferguson
Co-Executive Director, Head of Research and Policy
Kate heads our research and policy work, establishing evidenced, equitable and creative pathways to structural change. This includes undertaking, commissioning, and coordinating research, providing technical advice to policy stakeholders, and creating opportunities for knowledge exchange. She leads our political engagement strategy, developing working groups and building constituencies of influence in the UK and abroad. She manages PA’s fundraising portfolio for our research and policy programmes, including Stronger Communities and Atrocity Prevention. Kate is also responsible for a lot of our HR including PA’s ongoing efforts to create human-centred processes of recruitment, employment, and working culture.
Kate is an experienced analyst and strategist driving a prevention-first approach to foreign policy and the cycle of crises. She is a regular commentator on domestic and international issues relating to identity-based violence in the press and continues to publish academic writing. Her book, Architectures of Violence: The Command Structures of Modern Mass Atrocities, was published in 2020 by Hurst and Oxford University Press.
Before founding PA, Kate worked in political strategy and research across a number of roles in the third sector, academia, the UK parliament, and as a private consultant. Between 2012-2018 she lectured on subjects relating to the histories of rights and violence at the University of East Anglia. She was a founding Editor of Refugee History, where she helped develop the concept and online platform. She received her PhD in 2015 from the University of East Anglia on devolved structures of modern mass atrocities and has an MPhil in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford. Kate was made inaugural Chair of Policy at the European Centre of the Responsibility to Protect in 2018 where she works with the executive team to identify strategies for academic impact and is an occasional guest lecturer. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia.
“At the heart of Protection Approaches’ work is the pursuit of a more just, equitable and inclusive world. This means that we are part of a vast global movement for change that connects us to our local communities here in the UK and also to allies on the other side of the world – all of us making different contributions that help to push against division, greed and violence. I truly believe that we can achieve more together than we can alone and that through empathy and collaboration we can transform ourselves as well as the forces of oppression we exist to dismantle. I can think of no greater privilege than the work I am lucky enough to do, creating connections across our movement, helping to open access to power, and learning all of the time from others how to do that better.”
Safia Mizon Thioune
Stronger Communities Senior Policy and Research Officer
Safia is responsible for designing and delivering our Stronger Communities work, which seeks to support community-led approaches to hate crime and atrocity prevention policy and create more effective local-to-global response mechanisms.
Before joining Protection Approaches, Safia worked primarily in the education space. Her experience includes developing equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives for UK academic societies; working with Colombian universities and civil society to develop the role of higher education in peacebuilding; and supporting community groups in Brazil with outreach initiatives on sexual and reproductive health. She holds a BA in Spanish and Portuguese from the University of Manchester, and an MSc in Human Rights from LSE.
"Although the right to physical and psychological safety is generally accepted, it has remained stuck in the gap between policy and practice. Despite (or perhaps because of!) the recent uptick of equality strategies, it has been frustrating to see a continued disconnect between policy work and lived human experiences and emotions. Working to better understand identity-based violence is a pathway to meaningfully, and sustainably, addressing these imbalances – and one we can all play a role in taking up."
Szymon Glowacki
Stronger Communities Outreach Lead
Szymon is responsible for developing, delivering, and leading on our various programmes including school-based education workshops, online and offline community builder trainings, hate crime trainings, active bystander trainings, and engagement activities with marginalised communities supporting them to lead on making positive change in their local communities.
Szymon was born and raised in Poland to a traditional Roma-Gypsy family.
“I have seen my community being marginalized and denied basic human rights. It was hard for me to understand why some people are treated differently. I asked many Roma people: why don’t we do something about it? And very often I heard “We are used to things like that” this is why I decided to work with and for communities”
Szymon has worked for the past 10 years with Roma-Gypsy communities in Poland and the UK supporting them to have their voices heard. His work includes being a teacher, learning mentor and mental health advocate. Szymon uses art as a tool to explore one’s identity. Szymon earned his MA in teaching and journalism in Poland.