Professor Alpaslan Özerdem is Co-Director of the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK.

With over 20 year field research experience in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, El Salvador, Kosovo, Lebanon, Liberia, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka and Turkey, he specialises in the politics of humanitarian interventions, disaster response, conflict prevention, reintegration of former combatants and post-conflict state building. He has also taken an active role in the initiation and management of several advisory and applied research projects for a wide range of national and international organisations such as the United Nations and international NGOs.

Professor Özerdem has undertaken numerous research projects that were funded by the UK’s Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) (faith-based conflict prevention); British Academy (youth and peacebuilding); US Institute of Peace (reintegration of ex-combatants); and various EC funding schemes (conflict transformation and leadership).

He has published extensively and amongst other, is author of Post-war Recovery: Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (I.B. Tauris, 2008); co-author of Managing Emergencies and Crises (Jones & Bartlett, 2011); co-editor of Child Soldiers: From Recruitment to Reintegration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); co-author of Peace in Turkey 2023: The Question of Human Security and Conflict Transformation (Lexington Books, 2013); co-editor of Human Security in Turkey (Routledge, 2013); co-author of Youth in Conflict and Peacebuilding: Mobilization, Reintegration and Reconciliation (Palgrave, 2015); and co-editor of Local Ownership in International Peacebuilding (Routledge, 2015). Professor Özerdem is also President of Centre for Strategic Research and Analysis (CESRAN), a UK-based think-tank.