Ricardo Mendoza lives in Bogotá, Colombia. He is an Adviser for CIASE on reconciliation and peacebuilding, and has over 20 years experience working on international peace and armed conflict. He studied mediation at the Austrian Study Center for Peace and Reconciliation.

Duncan Morrow is lecturer in Politics and Director of Community Engagement at Ulster University in Northern Ireland. Following many years as an academic and activist, he was Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council from 2002–12. In 1998, he was appointed as a Sentence Review Commissioner responsible for the early release of prisoners following the Belfast Agreement. He currently advises the Scottish Government on tackling Sectarianism and Hate Crime.

Arda Inal-Ipa is a civil society activist, based at the Center for Humanitarian Programmes, Sukhum/i. By profession she is a psychologist, having graduated from Moscow State University. After the Georgian-Abkhaz war, together with like-minded people she established the Centre for Humanitarian Programmes (CHP). CHP works on civic education, human rights issues and democratic development in Abkhazia and for 20 years has been involved in Georgian-Abkhaz dialogue. Since 2007 Arda has been a member of the People’s Chamber on Abkhazia.

Marina Elbakidze is Project Coordinator at the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development and coordinator of the ‘Memory Project’ in Tbilisi. She is a lecturer in psychology at the Department of Organisational Psychology, Tbilisi State University. Since 1997 she has participated in a range of peacebuilding activities and has played a key role in Georgian-Abkhaz dialogue processes, including in close partnership with Conciliation Resources.

David Bloomfield has worked in the field of conflict and peacebuilding for over 35 years as a trainer, practitioner, policy adviser, analyst, and consultant. He specialises in the relationship between reconciliation processes, dealing with the past and transitional justice, and currently advises governments, multilateral agencies and international non-governmental organisations around the world. He has worked in many contexts, including Iraq, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Kosovo and Colombia. David was editor of the IDEA publication, Reconciliation after violent conflict: A handbook (2003).

Mark Salter has 25 years of experience in democracy, conflict, reconciliation and diversity management including with international NGOs, research institutes and intergovernmental organisations. From 2000 to 2010 he was a senior staff member of International IDEA, an intergovernmental organisation supporting democratic consolidation around the world. During that time he led the institute’s global work on reconciliation based on its Reconciliation after violent conflict: A handbook (2003). Since 2010 he has been an independent consultant.