Soumaya Bélaïd
Tunisia
Master of Public Policy
Kofi Annan Scholarship, Mansfield College
Funding: Oxford-Weidenfeld and Hoffmann-Abraham/Rausing
Born and raised in Tunisia, Soumaya is a multilingual Policy Researcher with seven years’ experience in development and security. She is a Chevening alumna with BA in English Literature from the Higher Institute of Languages of Tunis and MA in Security Studies from the University of Birmingham. Soumaya has played leading roles in the anticorruption, nonprofit sector. She was a Board Member and Programme Manager of Transparency International Tunisia. During her time in the organisation, Soumaya led projects on whistle-blower protection and corruption in Tunisia’s security sector. She also investigated and assessed Tunisia’s anti-corruption legal framework, its performance, and its compliance with international standards. Currently, she works as a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Advisor for North Africa for the British government in Tunisia providing research and analysis that inform the UK’s CVE policy in the region. Following her studies, she intends to return to Tunisia to help with making well-researched and studied policies that work for the majority instead of the elite.