I'm a policy researcher, editor, and writer based in Brussels specializing in peace and conflict, migration, democracy, and the policies and politics of the European Union. Most of my work as an independent consultant has been with various United Nations bodies, European Union institutions, and other public sector clients, often with a focus on Southeast Europe.After my master's degree in comparative politics (New School for Social Research, 1998), I began my career with the Open Society Institute's Forced Migration Projects in New York, followed by spells with the International Rescue Committee in Vienna, New York, and Sarajevo, where I lived for some six years. I undertook various assignments as a project design specialist in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, mostly with the UN Development Programme, while I gradually transitioned into journalism. I was an associate editor with Transitions Online (www.tol.org), where I followed Balkan affairs and EU integration issues, and an occasional contributor to RFE/RL's "Newsline" and the Wall Street Journal Europe. In 2007-14, I was a staff writer with European Voice, the Economist Group's newsweekly on EU affairs in Brussels, where I covered foreign policy, defense, development, migration, justice and home affairs, and the European Parliament. After leaving the paper, I've been focusing again on my advisory work for the UN and the EU.I'm experienced in designing, coordinating, and implementing field-based research projects utilizing qualitative and mixed methods. I have extensive experience in competitive bid-writing for large institutional donors and in producing policy briefs and synthesis reports for a variety of clients in the public sector and civil society. I regularly review current-affairs titles for Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Times Literary Supplement, and write occasionally for Balkan Insight and EUobserver. My latest piece, for Foreign Affairs, can be found here: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/bosnia-herzegovina/2022-05-18/bosnias-dangerous-pathI'm fluent in English and German and get by in French. I know enough Serbo-Croatian to get myself into trouble.