Medinat Malefakis
Early-Career Fellow 2021–2022

Dr. Medinat Abdulazeez Malefakis (born 1988 in Kaduna, Nigeria) is a global research and policy expert on terrorism, crisis, peace-building and humanitarian displacement. She was the crisis and humanitarian displacement information analyst for West, East and Southern Africa in the Norwegian Refugee Council’s ACAPS programme. Before this, she was a global postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin Social Science Centre (WZB), a research fellow at the United States Institute of Peace’s RESOLVE Network, and a junior researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Halle (DE).

Medinat obtained a Bachelor’s in history from Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria and a Master’s in international studies from the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA). Her PhD at the NDA and the University of Zurich was also completed in international studies, with a focus on terrorism and humanitarian displacement in the Lake Chad Basin of West Africa. She is currently a member of the independent review panel of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) in Geneva and holds a senior researcher position at the NADEL–Center for Development and Cooperation at ETH Zurich.