As Crisis Group’s Project Director for the Horn of Africa, Alan oversees the organisation’s research on Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and regional dynamics. He also hosts Crisis Group’s fortnightly The Horn podcast since its launch in 2019.

Alan has worked for over a decade in East Africa. Prior to joining Crisis Group as Senior Analyst for South Sudan in 2019, he served as a formal adviser and researcher for a number of organisations, including the United Nations, USAID, U.S. Institute of Peace, European Institute of Peace, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Folke Bernadotte Academy, Friedrich Egbert Stiftung and World Peace Foundation. He also published extensive conflict research on South Sudan through the Small Arms Survey and was an associate of the Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics. 
Alan previously covered Africa as a Nairobi-based journalist, reporting from Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Central African Republic, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. He also covered Sudan's split into two countries while based in Juba from 2010-2011. Alan has written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Time magazine, The Atlantic, a variety of U.S. newspapers, and Bloomberg.

• "Conflict and Crisis in South Sudan's Equatoria", United States Institute of Peace, April 2021
• “Spreading Fallout: The collapse of the ARCSS and new conflict along the Equatorias-DRC border", Small Arms Survey, May 2017
• “Conflict in Western Equatoria”, Small Arms Survey, July 2016