Erin McCandless is Professor of Politics and International Relations and Director of the Qatar-South Africa Centre for Peace and Intercultural Understanding at the University of Johannesburg. She serves as Senior Advisor at the Centre for Mediation in Africa, University of Pretoria, and holds affiliations with the Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies and Global Institute for Strategic Research in Doha. She previously held the Distinguished Visiting Professorship of Public Value at Hamad Bin Khalifa University.

Over three decades across 25 conflict-affected countries, Professor McCandless has pioneered research on transformative approaches to peace processes and social contracts, emerging and non-Western actors in mediation and global governance, and the humanitarian-development-peace-climate nexus. She bridges rigorous scholarship with high-level policy engagement, including advisory roles to senior UN leadership, political dialogue facilitation, designing and overseeing multi-stakeholder research, and involvement in shaping multilateral peace, development and governance frameworks.

As co-founder and chief editor for 15 years of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development – now a Q1 peer-reviewed journal – she elevated Global South perspectives internationally. Professor McCandless has authored over 100 publications including several policy-shifting UN reports. A frequent speaker at high-level forums in Doha, Stockholm, Geneva, the World Bank, OECD-DAC and across the UN, and contributor to Al Jazeera, SABC, News24 and other international media, she brings analytically rigorous, practice-informed perspectives to advancing inclusive political settlements, justice, and transformative global governance.