Team & Partners

Marika Theros is the Director and Founder of the Civic Engagement Project (CEP), bringing over two decades of experience building strategies, dialogues, and partnerships that connect collective insight, policy, and action in complex environments. She founded CEP to link research and practice in contexts of conflict and transition, focusing on how people sense, negotiate and reshape power to open pathways toward peace, justice, culture, and movement-building.

Marika has advised, catalyzed and developed programs, and led multi-stakeholder dialogues across the Balkans, the Middle East, Asia, Colombia and beyond, working with foundations, governments, international institutions, and civic groups on peace, security, and human rights in times of transition and transformation. Marika is also Senior Policy Fellow at LSE IDEAS, where her research focuses on mediation, adaptive peace processes, and civic agency, and a Senior Fellow at ISE. She is also Co-Founder of the Civic Ecosystems Initiative (CEI), which applies ecosystem thinking to strategy, transition, and renewal; an expert with Uplift Afghanistan; and a Non-Resident Fellow with the Strategic Litigation Project, contributing to efforts to address gender apartheid and strengthen international justice.

Sahar Halaimzai, former Deputy Director, is Chief Advisor to the Civic Engagement Project (CEP) and an Associate at LSE IDEAS’s Conflict and Civicness Research Group, where she co-led the Afghanistan Research Network. Sahar played a central role in shaping CEP’s evolution, developing its early approach to mobilisation and communications in an increasingly complex world. Her work helped ground CEP’s practice in civic leadership, creative advocacy, and collective agency. With over fifteen years of experience in human rights, peacebuilding, and freedom of expression, she co-founded the Afghan peace campaign Time4RealPeace, which advocated for inclusive peace negotiations. Previously, she served as Head of Campaigns and Communications at PEN International for seven years. In 2020, she won the London Writers Award and is working on her first manuscript.

Metra Mehran is a human-rights activist and scholar leading the Afghanistan justice and accountability work at the Civic Engagement Project (CEP). Her work focuses on women’s empowerment, gender equality, and development, and she has been recognised globally for her advocacy, including as a finalist for the 2021 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

She previously served as a Fellow at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and as a lecturer on international development at Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As Scholarship Director of the USAID Women’s Scholarship Endowment Program, she oversaw the largest educational initiative of its kind in Afghanistan, providing STEM scholarships to women. She has also managed a wide range of programmes for international NGOs focused on women’s rights and empowerment.

Metra co-founded the Feminine Perspectives Movement to ensure women’s voices are represented in peace processes. She has spoken at the United Nations, major universities, and international forums, and her writing has appeared widely in global media. She is currently an Afghanistan Advocacy Fellow at Amnesty International USA and a Gender & Policy Advisor with the Strategic Litigation Project (SLP), leading efforts to codify gender apartheid.

Wesna Saidy is a poet and researcher, and Fellow with the Civic Engagement Project (CEP). Trained in Law and Political Science, she has been deeply engaged across literary, social, and legal fields, using her work to explore justice, gender, and resilience. Through her poetry and essays, Wesna amplifies the experiences of Afghan women and girls, confronting issues of inequality and human rights with clarity and compassion. Her writing has become a platform for advocacy and reflection—illuminating both the struggles and the strength of communities facing repression and displacement. Previously, she worked with several organisations in Afghanistan, including the Citizens’ Charter National Priority Program under the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG), where she served in both social and legal capacities.

Sofia Hakimi is a humanitarian professional from Afghanistan and serves as a Research and Program Manager at the Civic Engagement Project (CEP) and an Employability Caseworker at the Nottingham Refugee Forum. Her work focuses on refugee empowerment through workshops, community events, and integration initiatives. She has extensive experience in project management and humanitarian operations, having worked with the UN World Food Programme, Save the Children, the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, and DABS, and has consulted for several international organisations. Sofia holds a Master’s in Business Administration from the Central University of Punjab, a Bachelor’s in English Literature from Kabul University, and a certificate in Humanitarian Logistics from the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (UK).

Rahela Sidiqi, has been at the forefront of the fight for women’s equality and the advancement of rural communities in Afghanistan for over three decades. She is the founding Director of the Rahela Trust for Women’s Education, the President of Omid International and founder of GRAaid. She pioneered several national reform initiatives, including the civil service law, reform methodologies, and structural adjustments.

Additionally, she has been a key governance and reforms advisor in both governmental and international settings. She’s shaped strategic policies, implementation designs, and administrative reforms for organisations like UN-Habitat, DFID, USAID, and OXFAM, among others. Her collaborations extend to 47 ministerial agencies and a range of private-sector NGOs.

Ariadne serves as Strategic Advisor to CEP. She is the Impact Director at Lighthouse Reports. She has 15 years of experience building programmes on conflict resolution, governance and human rights in complex contexts for philanthropic institutions and nonprofits. Prior to joining Lighthouse, she was a consultant to foundations working on forced migration, director of the Peacebuilding program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Co-Founder and New Markets Director at Localized, a startup social enterprise focused on closing the skills and employment gap for young people in developing markets.

Lauren serves as a Strategic Advisor and Expert to CEP, and is the director of communications at ISE. She brings two decades of communications experience, setting strategic agendas and shaping narratives for global organisations and national institutions. Prior to joining ISE and CEP, Lauren has advised multiple governments and worked at international organisations including Al Jazeera, the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the UNFCCC Climate Change Conference, the Crimes of War Project, and the Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands.

Iavor is the Ecosystem Strategy Adviser at CEP. His work draws on complexity science, ecosystem thinking, and two decades of experience in research, innovation, and engagement with civic actors and practices as a strategic adviser across a range of issues and geographies. Iavor is Research Fellow and Director of the Civic Ecosystems & Social Innovation Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Co-Founder of the Civic Ecosystems Initiative.