Georgia Holmer is a senior program officer in the Center for Gender and Peacebuilding at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Holmer leads the Women Preventing Extremist Violence (WPEV) project, which seeks to identify and strengthen the roles that women play in preventing conflict in their communities, and will be piloted in Nigeria. Holmer also serves as an instructor in the Gender and Peacebuilding course offered by the Institute’s Academy.
Since 1996, Holmer has worked on programs to understand and prevent violent extremism, terrorism, radicalization, and conflict. Prior to joining USIP, Holmer worked as an analytic consultant and facilitator/trainer designing and teaching courses on understanding radicalization and developing effective strategies to prevent and counter extremist violence through structured analysis. Holmer’s work has focused on a wide range of topics related to countering violence and conflict including an examination of post-conflict trajectories of violence in Bosnia, an analysis of political violence in Greece, an assessment of civil liberty and civil rights issues in countering violent extremism in the United States, and a re-evaluation of specific analytic tools and techniques used to understand the dynamics of radicalization.
Previously, Holmer served as a terrorism analyst for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for ten years. Her assignments included lead analyst on the inter-agency Kosovo Task Force in 1999, senior analyst on a multi-national task force on extremist violence in Greece at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, senior analyst in support of counterterrorism investigations at the FBI’s Office of the Legal Attaché in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is the recipient of five Exceptional and Superior service awards from the FBI over the course of her career.
Holmer is trained in conflict analysis and resolution, cross-cultural communication and a variety of structured analytic techniques and methodologies. She holds a master’s degree in international relations from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree from the School of International Service at American University. She has lived and worked in over 8 countries.
Recent Conferences and Presentations:
OSCE Seminar on Women and Terrorist Radicalization, June 2013, Dushanbe, Tajikistan (panel speaker)
UN Women International Summit on Women and Peacebuilding (with Centre for UN Peacekeeping), February 2013, New Delhi, India (invited contributor)
Counterterrorism Expo, May 2012,Washington, DC: “The Mindset of Violent Extremists” (panel speaker)
International Studies Association Annual Convention, April 2012, San Diego, CA: “Radicalization: A New Application of Red Hat Analysis” (presented paper)