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Travis L. Adkins is currently an International Affairs Fellow serving as a practitioner in residence with the Center for Conflict Resolution and Mediation at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP). Having broad experience in the areas of humanitarian assistance, democracy and governance, and conflict resolution, Mr. Adkins's work with USIP focuses on the implementation of the final stages of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement, as well as post referendum governance challenges in Southern Sudan, specifically the threats posed by inter-ethnic violence.
Prior to joining the U.S. Institute of Peace, Mr. Adkins managed several multi-million dollar democracy and governance programs in Lebanon and the West Bank/Gaza for the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). His portfolio included initiatives for the political empowerment of women, mitigation of electoral violence, security sector reform, and electoral administration support to the Government of Lebanon’s Ministry of the Interior and the Palestinian Authority’s Central Elections Commission.
Mr. Adkins also served as the regional program manager for East and West Africa with Africare, managing multi-sector operations in ten countries, including programming for agriculture, education, health and livelihoods.
Mr. Adkins has worked and/or studied in over two dozen nations in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, serving in both conflict and post-conflict settings with international NGOs, community based organizations, and several branches of the UN system, including UNICEF, UNIFEM and the UNDP. Most notably, in 2004 Mr. Adkins was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship to serve as a humanitarian aid worker with Save the Children's Darfur Emergency Program, in Darfur, Sudan. While in Darfur, his primary responsibility was to assess the monitoring and evaluation systems of the Darfur Emergency Program in over three-dozen refugee and Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps along the troubled Chad/Sudan border.
He holds a BA in African history as well as MAs in education and international affairs. He is an adjunct professor with New York University in Ghana and has served as a guest lecturer at Columbia and American Universities. Mr. Adkins is a continuing student of Arabic and Amharic, a 2009 Socrates Society Fellow with the Aspen Institute, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.