Dr Randolph Kent (Humanitarian Futures Programme and Kings College London)

Dr. Randolph Kent directs the Humanitarian Futures Programme at Kings College, London, where he and his staff have worked since 2006 with various multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental organizations at headquarters and in country offices to enhance their strategic and planning capacities for dealing with long-term humanitarian threats.

Dr Kent accepted his present post after completing his assignment as UN Resident/Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia in 2002. Prior to his assignment in Somalia, he served as UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Kosovo [1999], UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Rwanda [1994-1995], Chief of the UN Emergency Unit in Sudan [1989-1991] and Chief of Emergency Prevention and Preparedness in Ethiopia [1987-1989].

Over the past three years, he authored Dimensions of Crisis Impacts: Humanitarian Crises in 2015 [2007] for the UK Department for International Development, and Responding to Catastrophes: US innovation in a vulnerable world, dealing with the roles that the corporate and military sectors should be playing in light of exponential changes in futures types, dimensions and dynamics of humanitarian crises. [Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC – 2008]. In 2009, he authored Mapping the Models: The roles and rationale for the Humanitarian Coordinator, which he prepared for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; and in that same year, he completed a joint study with ICVA on a study entitled, Collaboration: Twenty Years Past and Twenty Years Future.

Dr. Kent is a member of the ALNAP Steering Committee, ODI/HPG’s Advisory Board and is serving on the Senior Advisory Board for DFID’s Humanitarian and Emergency Response Review. He has been a member of ELRHA’s Steering Group since it was founded, and is a Patron of the medical NGO, Merlin. At present he is participating in the CERF review, and is a reviewer for the SIDA evaluation to be concluded in 2010.