Erwin van Veen
Senior Research Fellow
Expertise
- Conflict and Fragility
- Security and Justice
- Aid Architecture
Regions
- Middle East & North Africa
As senior researcher, Erwin van Veen is an experienced professional who delivers high quality and insightful strategic advice that helps mitigate violent conflict. His direct area of expertise is how the security configuration of political orders influences their development.
Erwin leads a diverse team of five experts that researches coercive organizations, conflict dynamics and prospects for political reform in the Middle East. It does this for clients like ministries of foreign affairs, international organizations and NGO’s. By blending research with opinion pieces, timely events, media appearances, workshop facilitation and the occasional training, Erwin and the team take pride in helping clients develop innovative, evidence-based and humane policy responses to contemporary conflicts.
Erwin’s personal strengths include a broad curiosity, a quick grasp of complexity and the ability to combine the conceptual with the practical. Matching past achievements include the co-creation of major policy innovations such as the ‘International Security Sector Advisory Team’ (an international expert team on security sector reform), the ‘New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States’ (an agreement between 40+ states and international organizations to improve aid provision to fragile states), as well as the ‘Knowledge Platform Security and Rule of Law’ (a mechanism for knowledge brokerage and uptake among policy-makers and practitioners engaged in conflict-affected countries).
Erwin is a member of the United Nations Security Sector Reform Advisory Network, the advisory group to the NATO mission in Iraq (NMI) and a fellow at the Center for Syria Studies at the University of St. Andrews. His previous experiences include roles as peacebuilding and conflict specialist at the OECD (2010-2013), security and development advisor at the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006-2010) and human resource business advisor at Shell (2003-2005). Erwin obtained university degrees in public administration, security sector management and EU politics – all with distinction.
