Ali Wardak, who obtained his PhD degree from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, is a Reader in criminology at the University of South Wales, and a Fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy. His main teaching and research interests focus on comparative and transnational crime and justice, rule of law and the relationships between state and non-state justice systems.
From 2006 to 2008, he worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Kabul, and co-authored the 2007 Afghanistan Human Development Report where a ‘hybrid model’ for post-Taliban justice system in Afghanistan is proposed. He has collaborated closely with Professor John Braithwaite on Peacebuilding Compared (http://regnet.anu.edu.au/peacebuilding-compared/home) research project that focuses on a study of ‘what works in peace building’ and on the causes of conflicts in 48 countries. He is a Vice President of the South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology (http://www.sascv.org/), and has been an invited speaker at major conferences/forums in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States.
He has published widely, and is the joint winner (with John Braithwaite) of the 2013 British Journal of Criminology Radzinowicz Prize (http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/05/14/bjc.azu035.extract). On winning the prize, he was congratulated by the President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan through an official letter of appreciation (http://president.gov.af/en/news/41831).