Anne-Marie Weeden

Anne-Marie Weeden is a Senior Research Fellow within the Organised Crime and Policing research group. Anne-Marie was previously a consultant with expertise in combatting organised crime groups in wildlife trafficking, with specific experience of East Africa. She has been instrumental in supporting and coordinating previous RUSI research into these areas, during her career working in conservation in Uganda.

Anne-Marie has a multi-disciplinary background, having worked extensively in advertising before moving into the conservation sector. After moving to Uganda in 2008, she managed a Kampala-based UK conservation charity, before setting up her own consultancy to provide technical support and other services to conservation, peacebuilding, and security sectors across Africa.

She has been the implementation lead for a UKAID and Defra funded Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund project on “Countering Wildlife Crime: Livelihoods, Intelligence and Prosecution Capacity-building in Uganda” from 2016-2018. Since then, she has been responsible for the strategic design and project management of multiple further projects which brokered partnerships between NGOs with local and international law enforcement agencies, as well as other criminal justice system stakeholders, to build capacity in the investigation and prosecution of wildlife crime. She has also served as a board member to a rhino conservation charity, and provides organisational development and programme evaluation services to marine and wildlife conservation projects in East and West Africa.

Anne-Marie has a fascination with the intersection between illicit finance, corruption, and the illegal wildlife trade, which has led to the pursuit of a Master’s in Economic Crime and International Criminal Justice in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Portsmouth. She is currently based in the UK.