Dr Mehari Taddele Maru is currently a Part-time Professor Migration Policy Centre and Academic Coordinator of the Young African Leaders Programme at the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He is also a senior expert at Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration.
Prof Mehari is also a Fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS), Bruges, Belgium.
A graduate of Harvard and Oxford universities, Prof Mehari holds a DLS/PhD in Legal Sciences from JL Giessen University, Germany, an MPA from Harvard, an MSc from the University of Oxford and an LLB from Addis Ababa University.
With more than 22 years of management and professional working experience in multilateral bodies, he combines research excellence with a deep knowledge of multilateral systems. Until recently, Dr Mehari was a member of the Technical Committee of the Tana High-Level Security Forum (modelled on, and uniquely related to the Munich Security Forum for Africa), and he worked as Programme Coordinator for the AU Migration Programme and Legal Expert at the African Union Commission (AUC). Dr Mehari also served as Chief Strategist, Legal Drafter, and Lead Migration Expert in the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). He served as Programme Head for Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and as Director for University Reform at Addis Ababa University.