Marika Theros is a nonresident senior fellow at the South Asia Center. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for State Effectiveness and policy fellow at the London School of Economics where she leads their comparative research stream investigating local peace agreements across six key conflict-affected sites, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and South Sudan. She directs the Afghanistan Engagement Project, supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which supports new generation leadership and civil society initiatives. Over the last 20 years, she has designed a number of research and dialogue processes in the Balkans, South Asia and the Middle East, and focuses on the intersection between top-down and bottom-up processes. She publishes on security, justice and state-building issues in academic journals, and currently serves on the executive committee of the London Transitional Justice Network, and the boards of the Humanitarian Law Centre and Women for Peace and Participation. Marika is currently completing her doctorate in International Development at LSE, and holds an M.A. in International Affairs from the Columbia University and an MSc in Human Rights from LSE.