Georgia Holmer

Georgia Holmer has twenty-five years of experience in international security policy, research and practice, and its intersection with human rights.

Ms Holmer is the former Head of the Anti-Terrorism Unit at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)-Secretariat in Vienna, Austria, and the former Director of the Countering Violent Extremism Program at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. She served, with distinction, as an analyst for the FBI in international counterterrorism investigations for ten years, in Athens, Copenhagen, and Washington, DC, and has developed and taught curricula in critical thinking and creative approaches to understanding and addressing radicalisation to violence.

Ms Holmer has designed, led, and evaluated capacity building programmes to build peace and security on the ground in Nigeria, Kenya, the Balkans, Central Asia, and North Africa. She holds advanced degrees in international human rights law from Oxford University and in international relations from Boston University and has published and presented widely on issues related to the prevention of conflict and violent extremism, and human rights and counterterrorism.

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. Ms Holmer also serves on the Advisory Council of the RESOLVE Network Research Consortium. Currently based in Vienna, Austria, she works on these issues as a writer, advisor, teacher, and artist.