C-Up

Technical Advisory Board Members

Meet the minds we have onboard.

Dr. Meltem Onurkan Samani

C-Up Lead Founder and Coordinator of CPDC

Fiona Mullen

Prof. Erol Kaymak

Dr. Nicolas Jarraud

Prof. Neophytos Loizides

Asst. Prof. Katerina Antoniou

Meltem Onurkan-Samani is a historian with a PhD, a peacebuilding practitioner, and an independent policy consultant with over twenty years’ experience at the intersection of governance, conflict resolution, and civil society engagement in Cyprus. Her expertise includes peace-process architecture, confidence-building measures, and participatory approaches to conflict transformation. She served as co-chair of AHDR and H4C. From 2015 to 2020, she worked as Special Adviser on Political Affairs and History to the Turkish Cypriot leader, Coordinator of the bi-communal Technical Committees under UN auspices, and General Coordinator of working groups under the Turkish Cypriot negotiator’s office. She also co-chaired the Technical Committee on Education, overseeing large-scale initiatives including the Imagine Project. She is the Founder of the Cyprus Peace and Dialogue Centre (CPDC), active since 2020 in both communities to advance a results-oriented peace process.

Mine Yücel is a social researcher, civil-society practitioner and Director of Prologue Consulting and the Centre for Migration, Identity and Rights Studies (CMIRS) in Cyprus. She has worked for more than two decades on research and advocacy relating to migration, human rights, identity, trafficking, democracy, transparency and the Cyprus conflict. She founded Prologue Consulting in 2002 and CMIRS in 2009, developing research and public-opinion studies that have informed civil-society organisations, international institutions and policy discussions across Cyprus. She has also played an active role in bicommunal peace-building, including serving as Co-Chair of the Bicommunal Technical Committee on Gender Equality. Her work on human trafficking and human rights has received international recognition, including the US State Department’s 100 Women of Courage recognition in 2007 and the UK’s Commonwealth Point of Light award in 2019.

Mustafa Özbilgehan was born in London in 1998 and graduated from the University of Aberdeen School of Law in 2020 with a minor in Economics. He also completed the University's Leadership Academy in 2019. During his studies, he served as Vice Chair of the Sports Union (2016–2019) and later as Vice Chair of the Aberdeen University Student Council (2019–2020), contributing to the representation of thousands of students. He also served as President of the Federation of Turkish Cypriot Students in the United Kingdom (2019–2020) and President of the Nicosia Youth Association (2020–2024).

As the Founding President of the Turkish Cypriot Youth Federation, Özbilgehan was elected President at both the First Congress in 2024 and the Second Congress in 2026. Ex officio, he serves as Chair of the Turkish Cypriot Youth Congress, Turkish Cypriot Youth Assembly and Turkish Cypriot Youth Senate, as well as Vice Chair of the Higher Council for State Youth Affairs under the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Environment. He chaired the Turkish Cypriot Youth Congresses held in 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025 and continues to work on youth policy, civic participation and youth representation.

In addition to his youth civil society work, Özbilgehan serves as Vice President of the Futsal European Federation, Member of the Legal and International Relations Commission of the National Olympic Committee, Member of the Board of the University Sports Federation, and Trustee of the Türk Maarif Koleji Education, Science and Culture Foundation. He is a practising lawyer admitted to the Nicosia Bar, with a private practice focusing on administrative law and international law.

Mustafa Özbilgehan

Dr. Ilke Dagli-Hustings is a seasoned peace practitioner and researcher with over 15 years of experience in the field. She holds a PhD in Security, Identity, and Peacebuilding from the University of Warwick, an MSc in Security and Development from the University of Bristol, and a BA in European and International Politics from Northumbria University. Ilke's career spans academia, civil society, and international development, where she has taught at the University of Warwick and Exeter University and coordinated numerous peacebuilding, development and mental health projects across West and East Africa, Eastern Europe and Caucasus, and Western Balkans.

In her role at SeeD, Ilke has served as Senior Security Researcher, Head of Programmes and Field Operations, and Director General. She now directs Strategic Partnerships, focusing on strengething evidence-uptake and impact, diversifying alliances and integrating AI-driven solutions into SeeD’s efforts. Ilke is deeply committed to advancing innovative, sustainable peace and development solutions through strategic partnerships and cutting-edge research.

Dr. Ilke Dagli-Hustings

I studied Physics and Philosophy with a Year in Continental Europe (BSc) and Philosophy and History of Science (MA) at the University of Bristol, before completing my doctoral studies also at the Philosophy Department at the University of Bristol. The topic of my doctoral thesis was the defense of communitarian epistemology (a relativist epistemology) as an appropriate thesis about knowledge in order for Science (as an institution) to be conducive to a democratic society. During my doctoral studies I became with both theoretical accounts and more hands-on material on deliberative and participatory democracy. Following this, I conducted post-doctoral research within the context of project DEMOCRASCI, first in the University of Grenoble-Alpes and then at the University of Lyon. The project’s focus was on the participation of lay-people in the shaping of the scientific research agenda. Later, in 2019, I tested a deliberative democracy method of my own with the support of the Cyprus Biomedical Research Foundation. At the moment I am working as an R&D Project Manager at Catalink Limited, where I have the chance to engage with applied AI research and project proposal writing.

Yeshim Harris

Haris Shekeris

Dr. Bulent Kanol is the Founding Director of the Management Centre of the Mediterranean, known for advancing civic engagement, peacebuilding, and sustainable development across Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. He is currently leading the establishment of CESEC Europe—the Estonian Center for Social and Economic Change—in partnership with the Cyprus Academy of Local Governance and Cultural Heritage. He recently coordinated the EU-funded programme “Building Community-Art for Social Action,” strengthening inclusive cultural dialogue within local governments.

With over three decades of experience, Dr. Kanol has designed and led training, consulting, and research initiatives with public institutions, civil society organizations, and international bodies including the UNDP, EU, and EEA. His academic work spans peacebuilding, strategic management, and public policy. He previously served in senior roles at the University of the West of Scotland, the University of Manchester, and Middlesex University. He holds a PhD from the University of Brighton and an MBA from Emory University.

Dr. Bulent Kanol

Rena Choplarou

Prof. Charis Psaltis

Neophytos Loizides is Professor in International Conflict Analysis at the University of Warwick. His work bridges academia, diplomacy, and conflict mediation - from leading the ERC/UKRI-funded PEACERETURN project on peaceful voluntary return and durable solutions to displacement, to directing the Inclusive Peace Project (ORA7/ESRC), a global research collaboration spanning the UK, Canada, France (New Caledonia), and Japan. Beyond research, he has trained more than 150 diplomats from 25 countries in mediation and negotiation, and has advised international organisations including the Council of Europe and the Organization of American States.

Fiona Mullen is the Director of Sapienta Economics and is the author of the flagship monthly Sapienta Country Analysis Cyprus. Clients include international institutions, institutional investors, banks, oil and gas majors, big four accounting firms and more than a dozen embassies. Mullen has spent much of the past 20+ years both professionally and voluntarily in efforts to solve the Cyprus problem. She was Facilitator on the Economy Working Group and Technical Committee on Economic and Commercial Matters from 2008, first as a consultant during the preparatory phase of the negotiations and then as a staff member (Political Affairs Officer - P4) in 2009-10. She remained closely involved as a consultant to the Good Offices until early 2016. Since late 2017 she has supported the Good Offices as a consultant on specific projects, such as “lessons learned” in early 2018, and issues relating to the economy, energy and gender. She has co-authored five reports for PRIO on the “Cyprus Peace Dividend”. Since 2024 she has been cooperating closely with the Cyprus Peace and Dialogue Center (CPDC) on the “C-Up” project: an effort to remove structural barriers to a settlement of the Cyprus problem by updating the negotiations process design to include meaningful civic engagement.

Erol Kaymak is a Professor of International Relations at Eastern Mediterranean University and a specialist in the Cyprus peace process, with broader expertise in Turkey-EU relations and Eastern Mediterranean affairs. Over two decades, his work has bridged diplomacy, think tank research, and academia. He held a fellowship at the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin, and is a former Co-Coordinator of the Greek-Turkish Forum. On Cyprus, he has engaged with both the formal negotiations—including as an advisor to the Turkish Cypriot Leader's Consultative Committee—and with civil society initiatives, as a co-founder of the Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development (SeeD). He currently sits on the Technical Advisory Board of the C-Up project. His recent writing addresses diplomatic innovation, including the use of backstops in conflict resolution.

Dr. Nicolas Jarraud is currently Head of the Project Management Unit at Cyprus Seeds, where he is involved in Strategic Business Development as well as developing the Project Management Unit, which is dedicated to securing and management of a portfolio of EU-funded and other projects. Previously, he was a Senior Specialist for Engagement and Partnerships development at the Global Water Partnership Organization, an international organisation based in Stockholm and dedicated to global water security. The bulk of his work was dedicated to fundraising and donor engagement. Previously, he was Assistant-Vice President at the Cyprus Institute, where he was responsible for international relations, having previously spent several years coordinating their solar energy projects. He also has 10 years of environmental peacebuilding with UNDP in Cyprus as well as SeeD (a bi-communal think tank which he helped to create), and was involved in the creation of the Cyprus branch of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN), which is dedicated to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Dr. Jarraud has a PhD in environmental biology and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College, London.

Katerina Antoniou is an Assistant Professor in International Relations and Tourism at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) Cyprus. She is the author of the book Tourism as a Form of International Relations (Edward Elgar, 2023) and has published widely on peacebuilding, non-state diplomacy, social mediation and peace tourism. Her teaching practice spans across academic teaching, vocational training, and non-formal education (workshop and outdoor learning). Antoniou has received training on mediation, deliberative democracy, gender, and cross-cultural facilitation, and has led the implementation of training sessions on deliberative democracy, social mediation, and cross-cultural communication. She served as an organiser and trainer to the project Social Mediation in Practice, which received the European Parliament Citizen’s Prize award in 2020. Antoniou has also led the implementation of intercommunal peacebuilding projects and educational peacebuilding field trips to Cyprus and abroad. Katerina Antoniou is an appointed member of the Cyprus Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage, which works across the island’s divide on the restoration of heritage sites. She is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, and a Fulbright alumna.

Dr Nadia Kornioti is a lawyer with a specialization in Public International Law. Over the last 15 years she has worked with a long list of institutions and civil society organisations in Cyprus and abroad on questions of public law, human rights, migration and asylum, transitional justice and reconciliation, as well as civic participation and the empowerment of civil society. She has been active in multiple bi-communal initiatives in Cyprus since 2015, and she is the author of a monograph entitled Law’s Politics: The Cyprus Troubles, 1960-1968 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), an interdisciplinary legal historical examination of developments on the island during that period through the lens of international and Cypriot constitutional law. Building on her research on bicommunal fighting in Cyprus during the 1960s, her ongoing research focuses on internal armed violence and conflict, with a focus on the period of decolonization and the Cold War.

Yeshim Harris is a peace-building practitioner specialising in conflict transformation in communities marked by deep division and volatility. Her decade and a half of global experience spans Cyprus, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Lebanon, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. She is a public speaker and writer with a track record of building dialogue between polarised stakeholders, business leaders and rival factions who would not otherwise engage. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Conflict Analysis and Research Centre, University of Kent. She is a regular speaker at the Tavistock Institute, Bowling Green State University, and her initiatives have included partnerships with the United Nations Development Programme, the UK Parliament, and leading institutions across the UK and internationally.

Charis Psaltis is Professor of Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Cyprus, where he has served in the Department of Psychology since 2006 and was Chair of the Department from 2022 to 2024. He holds a PhD and an MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology from the University of Cambridge and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Oxford Centre for the Study of Intergroup Conflict, University of Oxford.

His work focuses on intergroup relations, collective memory, history teaching, social representations, peace education, and conflict transformation, with a particular emphasis on Cyprus and other divided societies. He has conducted more than two decades of applied research on the Cyprus conflict, combining social psychology, developmental psychology, political psychology, and education. His research has examined intergroup contact, trust, internally displaced persons, transitional justice, bicommunal relations, and citizen preferences regarding possible peace settlements.

Professor Psaltis is co-author, with Brady Wagoner, of Conflict and Change: Integrating Developmental and Social Psychology, published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. He has also co-edited History Education and Conflict Transformation and has published extensively in leading journals in social, developmental, political, and peace psychology. His work includes research using representative surveys, conjoint experiments, and comparative studies to identify zones of agreement in peace processes.

Beyond academia, he has been deeply involved in peacebuilding practice. He was a founding member and Research Director of the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research, founding President of the Cyprus Association of Social Psychology, coordinator of the Greek Cypriot team of the Greek Turkish Forum, and a member of the bicommunal Technical Committee on Education under UN auspices. He acted as advisor to CoE, OSCE and IOM in relation to history teaching and research, and integration of immigrants through contact.

In 2024, he received the Nevitt Sanford Award for Outstanding Professional Contributions to Political Psychology from the International Society of Political Psychology.

Rena Choplarou studied education, cultural and media studies, and theatre in Greece and London, and has spent over two decades working tirelessly for peace, education, and reconciliation in Cyprus. From AHDR and the Home for Cooperation to the Technical Committees on Education and Humanitarian Issues, and as Head of the Bi-Communal Committee of DISY (2014–2017), her work has always been driven by dialogue, courage, and belief in people. Her life motto: it’s not over until it’s over.