AHRC Council Member
Professor Funmi Olonisakin is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Council.
Funmi is Vice-President International, Engagement and Service (IES) at King’s College London. She is also Professor of Security, Leadership and Development at the African Leadership Centre in the School of Global Affairs at King’s. In her role as Vice-President IES, Funmi seeks to facilitate the deployment of King’s assets (including knowledge, scholarship and talent in service of society) locally, nationally and internationally, to enable transformative and lasting impact. She is committed to building interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration and sustaining equitable partnerships to realise positive and lasting impact within and beyond King’s.
Producing knowledge that influences change beyond the academy has been at the heart of Funmi’s research work and life as an academic. She has positioned her work to serve as a bridge between academia and the worlds of policy and practice. Her research has been shaped by her interest in deepening understanding of why civil wars relapse, and the drivers of youth vulnerability and exclusion in the developing world. More recently, she has sought to explore the interface between leadership, peace, and security as a basis to unpack and understand the big transnational problems that confront the world today.
Funmi founded the African Leadership Centre (ALC) both at King’s and in Kenya, as a collaboration between King’s and the University of Nairobi in 2010. The ALC aims to develop a new community of leaders generating cutting-edge knowledge for peace, security and development in Africa.
Funmi has held various key roles, including:
- United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (1999 and 2003
- Director, Conflict Security and Development Group at King’s College London (2003 to 2013)
- Advisory Group of Experts (AGE) on the Review of the UN Peacebuilding Architecture (2015)
- Advisory Group of Experts for the UN Progress Study on Youth, Peace, and Security (2016)
- United Nations University Council (2018 to 2025), serving as Chair from 2022 to 2025
Funmi has been recognised for her contribution in several areas, including:
- Extra-Ordinary Professor, University of Pretoria (2016)
- fellowship of King’s College (2020)
- doctor of philosophy (Honoris Causa), University of Pretoria (2022)
- honorary doctorate (Honoris Causa) in Defence and Security Studies (2022)
Funmi was educated at the University of Ife, Nigeria (now Obafemi Awolowo University), and King’s College London. She graduated with a BSc (Hons) in political science from Ife in 1984, and an MSc and PhD in war studies from King’s College London in 1996.
She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Political Sciences in University of Pretoria in 1998, and was awarded a McArthur Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of War Studies from 1998 to 1999.
Last updated: 7 April 2026