Barbara Kemper is Technical Officer for Peacebuilding & Conflict Transformation at Misereor and as such the representative of Misereor in the FriEnt team since August 2023. She is a fully qualified lawer and mediator holding a Master of Laws (University of Wellington, New Zealand) as well as a master’s degree in Peace and Security Studies (University of Hamburg).
During the past 15 years, Barbara Kemper initially worked as an advisor for the master’s programme in peace and conflict studies at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda – in her capacity as a peace expert for the Civil Peace Service (CPS) of the German Development Service (Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst – DED). During that time, she looked into the topic of land conflicts in Uganda. Afterwards, she worked as a coordinator of the CPS at Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Burundi. As such she also represented the Consortium CPS (Konsortium ZFD) in Burundi.
From 2017, Barbara Kemper worked as a country desk and regional officer in the Africa department of the Evangelisches Werk für Diakonie und Entwicklung (EWDE) / Brot für die Welt in Berlin – initially in an accompanying role in the liaison office for the Horn of Africa based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She then moved to Southern Africa to support the partner portfolio in Namibia. Since 2019, she has been the regional advisor for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi.
Her main foci are civil conflict transformation, peace education, and dealing with the past – especially the promotion of mental health and pychosocial support (MHPSS)), peace mediation, promoting dialogue as well as reflecting on peace practices (RPP).