Melinda Holmes is Program Director for the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) at the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN). WASL brings together more than 90 existing women’s networks and organizations in 40 countries with long-standing experience in addressing extremisms and promoting peace, rights and pluralism in communities affected by violence. A peacebuilding specialist, writer and strategist focusing on gender and political violence, Holmes is responsible for facilitating collaboration, solidarity, and knowledge exchange within WASL. Since 2015 she has contributed to ICAN’s analysis and advocacy on gendered approaches to transforming extremisms, including through co-authorship of multiple publications, facilitating trainings, and providing strategic advice to practitioners.
Previously, she has collaborated with organizations including the United States Institute of Peace, Search for Common Ground, Rand Corporation, and The Carter Center on research, analysis, guidance and programming to address extreme violence and violent extremism. In 2016-2017 Holmes was a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Women, Peace & Security. From 2013-2015 she worked with The Carter Center advising on the engagement of religious and traditional leaders and communities in advancing peace and human rights. In 2014, Holmes graduated with a master’s degree in international affairs from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, focused on the gendered and religious dynamics of conflict and peacebuilding. Prior to her graduate studies, Holmes lived in Egypt where she served as a refugee legal case worker amid the exacerbated human security crisis brought on by the 2011 Arab revolutions. She also worked as an educator at the Ecole d’Humanité in Switzerland where she developed curricula and taught on themes including nonviolence, conflict, globalization and civic activism. Holmes received her bachelor’s degree in Geography and Anthropology from the University of Southern Maine in 2006, where she focused on community planning and organizing.
RELATED LINKS:
→ Melinda Holmes and Rosalie Fransen, “Heiresses to the Prophet: Women Religious Scholars Transforming Violent Extremism in Indonesia,” International Civil Society Action Network, October 2021.
→ Stacey Schamber and Melinda Holmes, “Agents of Change: Transforming Gender Roles and Extremism in Somalia,” International Civil Society Action Network, October 2021.
→ Shannon Foley Martinez and Melinda Holmes, “Adjacency to Power: Gender, Trauma and Violence in White Supremacist Extremism in the United States,” International Civil Society Action Network, October 2021.
→ Melinda Holmes, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini and Stacey Schamber, Protecting Women Peacebuilders: The Front Lines of Sustainable Peace, International Civil Society Action Network, October 2020.