Mervyn has almost 30 years’ experience of political affairs, research and analysis, conflict resolution, security sector reform, governance, humanitarian affairs and coordination, in a wide range of fragile and conflict affected countries, including South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Syria, Palestine and Nepal, for a variety of international, governmental and non-governmental organisations. His academic background is in Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies. He is principally an Afghanistan specialist and have been working in and on the country since 1991.  He currently works as a senior level in the UN’s political mission and is responsible for engagement with the current Taliban authorities (his current posting straddled the change of regime, and he was responsible for assisting the UN in country with managing the transition in 2021). His key achievements of his current position are the successful development of effective working relationships with the current regime, and the development and management of political engagement support projects and low-key, context-specific reporting networks, the latter two activities having been especially complex due to the non-permissive environment. He has extensive experience of research and analysis and am currently managing research projects into political economy issues and resource conflicts.