Sonja Stojanović Gajić

Sonja Stojanović Gajić is an experienced researcher and practitioner of security governance and conflict transformation. She has two decades of experience supporting security sector reforms (SSR) and peace-building as a leader of civil society and consultant to a number of international organisations in Wider Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. She specialises in participatory research, capacity-building, strategic planning, evaluation and facilitation of multi-stakeholder dialogues among security and justice professionals, civil society and politicians. She had developed innovative engagement tools such as the methodology for measuring security sector reform (SSR) from the perspective of civil society, which has been applied in all Western Balkan countries. From the end of 2006 to October 2019, she was Director of Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) and helped it transform from an advocacy NGO into a think tank specialized in public oversight of the security sector. For her accomplishments in the civilian oversight of the security sector and inclusion of youth in security research, she received the award for The Person of the Year 2019 by the OSCE Mission to Serbia. She is currently an independent consultant, based in Belgrade, Serbia facilitating knowledge exchange on the democratisation of security globally and an active contributor to a number of Track II initiatives working on trust-building in Europe.