As Crisis Group’s Project Director for the Horn of Africa, Alan oversees the organisation’s work on Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and regional dynamics. He also hosts Crisis Group’s 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 2018, 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 conflict research through the Small Arms Survey and was an associate of the Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics. Alan started his career as a journalist based in Juba, where he covered Sudan’s split into two countries. He then reported in countries across the continent as the Nairobi-based Africa correspondent for McClatchy newspapers and as a correspondent for Time magazine. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and The Atlantic.

• “Conflict and Crisis in South Sudan's Equatoria”, United States Institute of Peace, April 2021
• “Insecure Power and Violence: The Rise and Fall of Paul Malong and the Mathiang Anyoor”, Small Arms Survey, October 2019
• “Spreading Fallout: The collapse of the ARCSS and new conflict along the Equatorias-DRC border”, Small Arms Survey, May 2017