Child Protection and Practice (November 2025 - ongoing): As a member of the Editorial Board of Child Protection and Practice, I was invited to undertake, on a pro bono basis, the role of Executive Guest Editor for the journal's special issue, The War on Children. Working alongside Dr M. Catherine Maternowska (Editor-in-Chief), Hani Mansourian, Roseline Olumbe, Saudamini Siegrist and Cornelius Williams, my role has been to help shape and coordinate a global collection of research and practice-based papers examining the protection of children affected by armed conflict. My contribution has included helping to define the editorial direction of the special issue; identifying and mentoring prospective authors, particularly frontline practitioners working in humanitarian settings; establishing an innovative pairing initiative linking practitioners with experienced writers to support practice-based publication; coordinating the editorial workflow through Elsevier's Editorial Manager platform; identifying and recruiting peer reviewers from across the international child protection community; managing the peer review process for assigned manuscripts; and supporting authors to strengthen their manuscripts in response to reviewer feedback. Bringing together contributions from leading researchers and practitioners worldwide, the special issue aims to strengthen the evidence base and advance policy and practice for children affected by armed conflict.

HDPI Child Protection Reference Group (July 2025 - June 2026): Engaged as Senior Expert, Child Protection and Care, to support HDPI’s global initiative to reimagine child protection and care in response to major changes in the international development and humanitarian landscape. Working with a team of 12 global professionals, my contribution included helping conceptualise the initiative and leading the drafting of the Phase I concept note; supporting strategic dialogues with global, regional and national experts; leading the drafting of the Phase I synthesis report; and contributing to think pieces and discussion papers on critical issues affecting children’s protection and care. For Phase II, I led the development and drafting of the methodology and overall approach for the next stage of the inquiry. I am also leading the ongoing work on systems maturity, examining how child protection systems become stronger, more coherent and resilient, drawing on country evidence, expert consultations and comparative analysis to identify practical pathways for strengthening child protection and care systems over the next 10–20 yearson goes here

UNICEF Viet Nam (February - May 2025): Engaged as an international child protection consultant to support UNICEF Viet Nam’s contribution to the European Union Justice and Legal Empowerment Programme, Phase II (EU JULE II), led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). My work focused on justice for children, including child-friendly justice procedures, digital case management, capacity development and strengthening institutional practice. A key part of the assignment was helping position UNICEF’s work so that child rights and justice for children were embedded within the broader justice sector reform agenda, rather than treated as a separate or stand-alone area of work. This included analysis of the legal and institutional environment, programme design, strategic advice and identifying opportunities to leverage EU JULE II to strengthen national systems and improve access to justice for children

UNICEF Lebanon (August 2024 - July 2025): Engaged as an international child protection consultant to support UNICEF Lebanon in the development of its Child Protection Strategy 2025–2030. My contribution included reviewing the existing child protection programme and wider national child protection architecture; consulting with UNICEF staff, government counterparts and partners; and helping define the strategic direction, priorities and programme structure for the next phase of UNICEF’s work. The strategy was developed in the context of conflict, displacement, severe economic pressure and major constraints affecting national systems and services. The work included strengthening the articulation of UNICEF’s approach across children affected by armed conflict, violence against children and child marriage, justice for children, social service workforce strengthening, child protection in schools, community engagement and systems strengthening. I also contributed to identifying priority interventions for scale, clarifying implementation strategies and considering the human resource and organisational arrangements required to deliver the strategy.

Coram International (2022-2023): UNICEF ECARO has engaged Coram International to undertake a formative and summative evaluation of the childcare and deinstitutionalisation reforms in seven countries in Europe and Central Asia. My contribution will be to conduct a rigorous assessment of the Government of Georgia’s childcare and deinstitutionalisation reforms’ including an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in approaches taken by Georgia; and harnessing insights on how to address possible system level bottlenecks in supporting children with disabilities and other highly marginalized and vulnerable children to remain with families or in family-based care.

Coram International (2021-2022): UNICEF Philippines engaged Coram International to support the UNICEF Field Office in Mindanao to review the regions social service provision. My contribution was to lead on the evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of the social welfare programmes and to review the scope and functions of the social services workforce. This involved costing the social work workforce; researching the number of social service/social workers needed per 100,000 child population in selected countries; proposing a competency and capability frameworks for social work; identifying appropriate models of leaning such as e-learning management systems; costing the development of online onboarding and orientation courses; identifying innovative career development opportunities; and researching and mapping higher education institutions and social work programmes.

Coram International (2020-2022): UNICEF Papua New Guinea contracted Coram International to carry out a mapping and analysis of the legal and policy frameworks in Papua New Guinea. My contribution was to map the institutional arrangements for child protection across government agencies; to conduct a stakeholder analysis; and to propose evidence-based strategies for overcoming identified barriers, gaps and weaknesses in the national architecture for child protection.

Coram International 2020-2021: UNICEF Philippines contracted Coram International to carry out an evaluation of UNICEF Philippines’ Child Protection Programme 2017-2020. My contribution was to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the programme as part of the wider evaluation; to critically assess the operation of the national child protection system; to conduct stakeholder interviews; and to draft relevant sections of the final report.

Coram International (2021-2022): UNICEF Pacific contracted Coram International to carry out a series of Situation Analyses in each of the 14 Pacific Island Countries, along with a regional Pacific overview. My contribution was to write the child protection situational analysis in each of the 14 countries based on drafts submitted by the UNICEF Country Office and to write the regional child protection overview. This involved analysing key data, knowledge and evidence and proposing a series of recommendations for strengthening the child protection response and systems in each of the 14 countries and region-wide.

Syntegral (2020-2021): The INSPIRE Guide is a resource on the adaptation and scale up of violence against children prevention programs to ensure that they are as much as possible aligned to existing evidence and are part of each country’s national action plan. My contribution was to provide expert technical advice on child protection and violence against children to the authors of the Guide; to review draft text and tools using a child protection / violence against children’s lens; to facilitate country level engagement, particularly in Cambodia, the Philippines and Uganda; and to support these countries to review their national response to violence against children and assess capacity for adaptation and scale up of key evidence-based interventions.

UNICEF Child Protection New York (2020-2021): I was commissioned by UNICEF Child Protection to conduct a global rapid analysis on how UNICEF programming was evolving in response to the impact of the pandemic, covering children’s access to justice and violence against children. My contribution was to develop the methodology and tools; to conduct a desk analysis; to write a series of reports on the findings, of examples of adaptation and on lessons learned; and to craft recommendations for supporting and scaling up good practices. This first of two two publications are Access to Justice for Children in the era of COVID-19: Notes from the Field, and Access to Justice for Children in the era of COVID-19: Learnings from the Field. Both reports were co-authored with Vijaya Ratnam-Raman, the then UNICEF Child Protection Specialist (Access to Justice) and launched in February 2021.

UNICEF Child Protection New York (2020-2021): This the second publication arising from this consultancy based on the learnings from the field about how justice for children programming had adapted to meet the challenges of COVID-19. For the background to this consultancy, please see Access to Justice for Children in the era of COVID-19: Notes from the Field.