Dr Joseph Hongoh is a Peacebuilding, Governance and Development specialist with over 15 years public and private sector experience in designing and implementing programs in participatory governance, peacebuilding, Gender, Equity, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI), socio-economic and political analysis, and community development.

Joseph has well-developed skills in project management, strategic planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning. Dr Hongoh is a competent analyst, creative thinker, trainer and facilitator. He holds a PhD in Governance and Conflict Management from The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

As a practitioner in Peacebuilding and Post-conflict reconstruction, Dr. Hongoh has experience working with local, national and international actors. His interests lie in understanding the experiences and agencies of local actors in the context of peacebuilding, and how those experiences challenge, inform and transform international actors’ perceptions of security and development. Dr. Hongoh is thus at the forefront of transformative and reflective peacebuilding that invests on dialogical and mediated approaches and understanding lived experiences of various actors in the field of peacebuilding.  Here, Dr. Hongoh has worked with nomadic and agro-pastoralists in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Sudan. He also successfully brought together members of parliaments from the Great Lakes Region of Africa to coordinate their legislative, oversight and representative efforts in promoting local forms of governance as platforms for peaceful resolution of conflicts and promoting economic development. The approach created a space for negotiating differences among communities, building consensus on contested policies, communicating policy decisions to remote communities, conducting dialogue forums on emerging issues, and building social cohesion.

Outside Africa, Dr. Hongoh has been involved in peacebuilding and conflict resolution activities in the Philippines, Autonomous Region of Bougainville and Australia. In the Philippines, Dr. worked with the Office of the Presidential Advisor on the Peace Process (OPAPP) where he was engaged in monitoring and evaluation of peacebulding programs undertaken by the Peace Institutions Development Office (PIDO). In Bougainville, Dr. Hongoh was part of the Peace and Conflict Studies Institute Australia (PaCSIA) team that run the Bougainville Referendum Dialogues. The dialogues aimed to create the opportunity for Bougainvilleans to express their own concerns, hopes and ideas about a more peaceful and prosperous future for Bougainville. A key part of these dialogues was to provide space for local voices to reimagine peacebuilding during the transition period. In Australia, Dr. Hongoh successfully implemented the award-winning Diverse Brisbane Inter-Cultural Dialogues project. The project aimed at supporting community leaders from a range of cultural backgrounds to develop relationships with each other, and to build the skills and capacity needed to increase community cohesion. The Dialogues brought together participants from over 50 communities including people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities; people with disabilities; and other subsets of the community that may be harder to reach.

As an academic and interdisciplinary researcher with interests in Peacebuilding and Post-conflict Reconstruction, Conflict analysis and resolution, Humanitarian Intervention, and Development Studies. As a sessional lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Dr. Hongoh has designed and delivered courses in Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution; International Security; Conflict analysis; Conflict Resolution and Management; Environmental Politics and Policy, Politics of Development, Mediation, and International Relations. He also participated in course evaluation and curriculum development and served as student mentor and helped develop the next generation of international development experts. He was Awarded Deans Commendation for Excellence in Teaching in 3 consecutive semesters.