Staff

Dr. Norbert Ropers send email

Dr. Norbert Ropers
Director BPS

Norbert manages the BPS field office in Thailand, which implements a range of activities related to all three BPS programme areas throughout South and Southeast Asia. He is a founding shareholder of BPS and also established, and served as director (until 2004), the Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management (now Berghof Conflict Research (BCR)). From 2001 to 2008, he headed the Resource Network for Conflict Studies and Transformation (RNCST) in Sri Lanka. Previously, Norbert worked for the Institute for Development and Peace (University of Duisburg), the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House, London) and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). He was also the director of the academy of the Gustav Stresemann Institute.
Dr. Oliver Wils send email

Dr. Oliver Wils
Executive Director

Oliver is responsible for the overall management of the BPS office in Berlin and plays a central coordinating role for the international team of conflict transformation experts that works alongside the Berlin staff. He also manages the Resistance and Liberation Movements in Transition Programme and co-edits the Berghof Policy Briefs. In addition, Oliver takes a special interest in the Peace Envoy Programme and project development in the Middle East. Prior to his current post, Oliver worked for BCR and has been an independent consultant in the field of development cooperation. Oliver is a political scientist with a specialization in the Middle East, where he lived for some time. He has an MA and a Ph.D. from the Freie Universität Berlin.
Barbara Unger send email

Barbara Unger
Deputy Director, Senior Coordinator Latin America

Barbara coordinates BPS programme activities in Latin America. Alongside programme work, she coordinates training, consulting and backstopping for development cooperation actors: mainly, the German Society for International Cooperation GIZ (formerly GTZ). Her role further includes supporting the BPS directors in the general management. Apart from dialogue processes and peace support infrastructures, her focus is on reflective practice. Prior to joining BPS, Barbara was the coordinator of Institute for Foreign Affairs/zivik (a funding body of the German Government for conflict resolution activities) and development cooperation governmental and non-governmental organisations. She has also worked as an independent trainer and consultant, as well as in governmental and non-governmental organisations in the area of development cooperation. As a political scientist, with a specialization in development and gender issues, Barbara has a diploma in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin and a postgraduate degree from the German Development Institute.
Susanne Breda send email

Susanne Breda
Financial & Administration Coordinator

Susanne coordinates BPS’ finance and administration. In 2003, she joined BCR as the financial coordinator for the Resource Network for Conflict Studies and Transformation (RNCST), Sri Lanka, and moved to her current position when the BPS was established in October 2004. Previously, Susanne worked in similar functions for several non-profit organisations.
Fernando Aramayo Carrasco send email

Fernando Aramayo Carrasco
Associate, Dialogue Activities

Fernando is a BPS associate for dialogue activities in Bolivia. His engagement with BPS started within the framework of Conflict Management and Culture of Peace activities for GIZ (formerly GTZ)/PADEP (implemented by the consortium COMO-Berghof-GOPA) and, in 2009, broadened into political analysis and dialogue support activities for BPS. Prior to his engagement with BPS and the consortium, he worked in different capacities with and in governmental institutions and for the international cooperation efforts in Bolivia. Fernando holds a MA in Economics from Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo.
Ariya Dilokchaichanwuth send email

Ariya Dilokchaichanwuth
Executive Assistant, Bangkok

Ariya is the executive assistant of the BPS Bangkok Office. Prior to joining BPS in 2008, she worked for Japan Airlines for ten years, taught hospitality and airline management at Suan Dusit University, Thailand, and worked for a human resources company in Bangkok as a coach in team building and risk management. Ariya has graduated in Hotel Management from Rangsit University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Ulrike Hopp send email

Ulrike Hopp
Special Adviser, Peace Support Infrastructure

Ulrike supports the Mediation and Peace Infrastructures Programme and also works on organisational learning opportunities for BPS. She was deputy director of the Sri Lanka Project from 2005 to 2008, on leave from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Prior to this, Ulrike served as the desk officer for conflict prevention and peacebuilding at BMZ, where she authored the ministry’s concept note on this area. Ulrike has an MA in Business Administration from the Freie Universität Berlin and a postgraduate degree from the German Development Institute. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the Universität Hamburg, conducting an investigation into the role of the peace secretariats in Sri Lanka’s peace process and their contribution to conflict transformation.
Isolde Keller send email

Isolde Keller
Financial & Administration Assistant

Isolde joined BPS as a Financial and Administration Assistant in March 2011. Previously she was employed at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin as Financial Management Assistant. She has a MA from the Universität Hamburg in French Linguistics, Business Administration and Science of Education. Isolde will be with us for at least 2 years replacing Yasmin Behrens during her maternity leave.
Daniela Körppen send email

Daniela Körppen
Researcher, Systemic Conflict Transformation

Daniela coordinates an action research project on systemic conflict transformation that explores the potential of systemic thinking for conflict transformation strategies. She further provides support for other systemic conflict transformation activities in the reflective practice area, such as developing systemic methods for strategy planning, assessment and conflict analysis. Prior to joining BPS, she worked as a journalist. Daniela has a graduate degree in Sociology and Latin American Studies from the Universität Frankfurt am Main and a graduate degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the Universität Magdeburg. She is currently conducting her Ph.D. at the Universität Marburg with the aim to develop a systemic-constructivist framework for the analysis and transformation of conflicts, focusing on governance issues in Sudan.
Judith Large send email

Judith Large
Special Adviser, Peace Envoy Programme

Judith is BPS’ special adviser with regard to the Peace Envoy Programme. Among other things, she has developed and remains closely linked to Sudan activities. Judith has senior-level experience working in a variety of conflict zones at both national and local levels. She has also worked as a consultant for the UN, including WHO, UNHCR and UNDP/BCPR. This included engagement with community actors and responses during war in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and contributing to policy formulation for inclusive processes in post-war recovery. As an advisor to a UK Consortium on Complex Emergencies, she supported development and community agencies in responding to the conflict in Gulu, Uganda. Later assignments took her extensively to Indonesia and broader Southeast Asia. Judith has been a visiting lecturer in conflict analysis and mediation at universities in the UK and the Netherlands and has published on peace processes and human security. Between 2003 and 2006, she worked with International IDEA, Stockholm, focusing on democracy building and conflict management. She holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Sussex and an MA in International Analysis from the University of Kent at Canterbury (UK).
Hannes Siebert send email

Hannes Siebert
Senior Adviser

In the framework of the collaborative BPS/UNDP Lebanon National Dialogue Support Project, Hannes provides technical support and expert advice to dialogue and consensus building in Lebanon. As an experienced facilitator and negotiator, Hannes has worked with national stakeholders in the development and implementation of national peace structures, authentic negotiations processes and local/regional conflict interventions in several countries. In his home country, South Africa, he served as the director of the National Peace Secretariat (the multi-party body mandated to implement the 1992 National Peace Accord). After 1994, he assisted the Special Presidential Task Force in key intractable conflicts, focusing for example on the demilitarization of militias. In Sri Lanka, he advised the country’s peace secretariats and facilitated the creation of the multi-party negotiations forum, One Text. In Nepal, he helped set-up the Nepal Transitions to Peace Initiative and has been a key adviser to the Nepali peace process.
Luxshi Vimalarajah send email

Luxshi Vimalarajah
Senior Coordinator, Diaspora Dialogues

Luxshi coordinates BPS diaspora activities and collaborates with the Resistance and Liberation Movements in Transition Programme. During the Sri Lanka Project, she was responsible for the overall strategic planning and assessment, as well as the management of a variety of programmes between 2003 and 2008. In the context of the work of BPS in the Asia region, Luxshi was involved in projects related to gender and peacebuilding. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. on the thematic complex of Diaspora and Conflict Transformation. She has an MA in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin.
Martin Wählisch send email

Martin Wählisch
Associate, Mediation & Lebanon

Martin is an associate of BPS since 2009 within the BPS/UNDP Lebanon National Dialogue Support Project. His areas of experience include human rights and legal issues in international conflict resolution, UN peace mediation and strategic planning and analysis of peace processes. As a specialized lawyer in European and public international law, he is also working as senior researcher at the Center for Peace Mediation and the Institute for Conflict Management, European University Viadrina, Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance. Martin has worked with the UN (New York, Beirut), the German Federal Foreign Office, the European Commission and a Russian refugee and human rights NGO (Moscow, Caucasus). He also teaches conflict prevention and management courses for the MA Programme in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Viadrina University.
Claus-Dieter Wild send email

Claus-Dieter Wild
Resource Manager

Claus-Dieter is responsible for the Berghof’s library and information technology system. Starting with the Sri Lanka Project, he has been serving as a resource officer for several of BPS’ projects. Previously, he worked as a freelance facilitator in political education and as a mediator in the community sector. Claus-Dieter has a MA in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin.
Dr. Oliver Wolleh send email

Dr. Oliver Wolleh
Senior Coordinator, Southern Caucasus

Oliver coordinates the Peace Envoy Programme in the Caucasus, which was initiated by BCR in 1997 and, since 2003, managed by BPS. He is also an associate researcher at BCR and lectures on conflict management, mediation and negotiation skills at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Science MA programme on Intercultural Conflict Management. Oliver studied Political Science at the London School of Economics, UK and has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Wolfram Zunzer send email

Wolfram Zunzer
Associate, Southern Caucasus

Wolfram is a facilitator for the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian dialogue processes. Prior to this, he worked as a coordinator for the Sri Lanka Project and BPS from 2001 to 2006. His areas of experience include conflict analysis, policy dialogue and working with state and non-state actors, including diaspora and liberation movements in Europe, Africa and Asia. Wolfram has also worked with OECD, German Foreign Office/Zivik, InWEnt, GTZ, EED, and Austrian Development Agency. Wolfram has a diploma in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin and studied International Relations and International Public Law in Amsterdam. He has also concluded the peace mediation training of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in 2008.