Day 1

16 October 2024
Bonn Universitätsforum
Heussallee 18–24, 53113 Bonn

in person

30 Years for a More Peaceful World

18:00–18:30                                   Words of Welcome
                                                                 Conrad Schetter, Director of bicc

                                                                 Gonca Türkeli-Dehnert, State Secretary, Ministry for Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia

The Missing Peace. Why Field Research Matters to Policy and Practice

18:30–19:30                                  Panellists
                                                                •   Anka Feldhusen, German Federal Foreign Office 
                                                                •   Elizabeth Ferris, Georgetown University
                                                                •   Paul Holtom, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) 
                                                                •   Conrad Schetter, bicc

                                                                 Chair: Maurice Döring, bicc

19:30 

Celebrating 30 Years of bicc 

Evening Reception with Wine and Appetisers

Words of Welcome

Gonca Türkeli-Dehnert

Gonca Türkeli-Dehnert is the State Secretary of the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia since June 2022. Gonca Türkeli-Dehnert is a German administrative lawyer, ministerial and political official (CDU). From October 2021 to June 2022, she was the State Secretary for Integration at the Ministry for Children, Family, Refugees and Integration of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. She acted as Managing Director at the Deutschlandstiftung Integration gGmbH in Berlin 2018-2021 as well as Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration at the Federal Chancellery in Berlin from 2006–2018. Previously, Gonca Türkeli-Dehnert worked as an Assistant to the Legal Department (TZ), European and German energy law, labour law, company law, drafting shareholder resolutions at Gaz de France Deutschland GmbH in Berlin 2003–2005.

Conrad Schetter studied geography, history, education, Persian and Indonesian at the University of Bonn. From 1999 to 2013, he worked at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn, where he also held the position of Acting Director. Since 2013, Conrad Schetter is the Director of bicc. He started his academic career with studies on the impact of ethnicity on violent conflicts. His research has focused on themes such as the politics of interventions, spaces of violence (e.g. ungoverned spaces, frontiers), development, humanitarian aid and conflict, Jihadi movements (e.g. Taliban) and forced migration. Conrad Schetter has adviced German ministries, governments and NGOs. Among others he is a member of the presidency of Welthungerhilfe and of the Board of Trustees of IDOS as well as a member of the Advisory Boards of DSF and SEF.

Our Panelists

Anka Feldhusen graduated from the Kiel School of Applied Sciences, studied Political Science, Slavistics and English. Later she received a diploma in Political Science at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, and subsequently worked there for three years. After that, Anka Feldhusen studied for the higher foreign service at the training center of the Foreign Office in Bonn and received a master’s degree in International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford (USA). Anka Feldhusen worked at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the Federal President of Germany. For two months, she headed the office of the Foreign Office in Prizren (Kosovo). She also worked as Deputy Head of the German Embassy in Cuba. From July 19, 2019 to July 2023, Anka Feldhusen was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Federal Republic of Germany to Ukraine. Prior to that, she worked twice at the German Embassy in Ukraine - from 1994 to 1997 and from 2010 to 2015. She is fluent in Ukrainian. Since July 2023, Anka Feldhusen works at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Director for Civilian Crisis Prevention  and Stabilisation.  

Elizabeth Ferris is the Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also an ISIM Research Professor at Georgetown. She joined ISIM in Fall 2015 after serving for 9 years as a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement and as an adjunct professor in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. In 2016, she served as senior advisor to the UN Secretary-General  in planning the Global Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants which led to the development of the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants. See her full bio in the panel on “The Missing Peace”.

Paul Holtom is the Head of the Conventional Arms and Ammunition Programme at UNIDIR. He conducts research into, and supports efforts to build capacity to address, the illicit trade, diversion, and uncontrolled proliferation of conventional arms, including small arms and light weapons (SALW) and ammunition. Paul has authored and co-authored various publications on the international arms trade and conventional arms control, with a recent focus on the Arms Trade Treaty, weapons and ammunition management, and the diversion of conventional arms and ammunition. See his full bio for our panel on “The Missing Peace”.

Conrad Schetter studied geography, history, education, Persian and Indonesian at the Universityof Bonn. From 1999 to 2013, he worked at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn, where he also held the position of Acting Director. Since 2013, Conrad Schetter is the Directorof bicc. He started his academic career with studies on the impact of ethnicity on violent conflicts. His research has focused on themes such as the politicsof interventions, spaces of violence (e.g. ungoverned spaces, frontiers), development, humanitarian aid and conflict, Jihadi movements (e.g. Taliban) and forced migration. Conrad Schetter has adviced German ministries, governments and NGOs. Among others he is a member of the presidency of Welthungerhilfe and of the Board of Trustees of IDOS as well as a member of the Advisory Boards of DSF and SEF.

During his studies, Maurice Döring focussed on Middle East politics, development cooperation and peace and conflict studies. Among other practical experiences. He interned for the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) in Yemen in 2009/10 and worked on Yemen with the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) on a project on Arms Control and Missile Proliferation in the Middle East.

After finalising his M.A. on the perspectives of power- sharing in Iraq, he began working at bicc in early 2015 in a project on a sustainable energy trajectories project in the MENA-region. In 2018, he switched to researching the prevention of radicalisation and took overthe responsibility for the academic network on Connecting Research on Extremism in North Rhine-Westphalia CoRE-NRW in 2019.