Dr. Titilope F Ajayi is a pracademic/scholar-practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of gender, conflict, peace and security, and governance and political order, with over two decades of experience spanning policy analysis, international civil society practice, and academic research. This multisector positioning enables her to bridge academic theory with field-grounded and policy-relevant knowledge production in ways that contribute to the decolonization of security and governance knowledge by centering African epistemologies and lived realities. Titilope is currently a Senior Researcher with the Central Africa Observatory on Transnational Organised Crime, Institute for Security Studies, where her research engages with the political economies of conflict, violence, and transnational organized crime, with particular attention to how state authority, non-state actors, and social power relations co-produce security outcomes. Her broader research interests include gender and Women, Peace and Security, security sector reform and governance, civil society and state-society relations, artificial intelligence in security, and decolonial approaches to security and governance in Africa. Drawing on empirical work across West Africa, the Lake Chad Basin, and Central Africa, and emerging research in South Sudan, her current work interrogates, in contexts of fragility and transition, the gendered security logics of state responses to insecurity, new frontlines of democratic accountability in Africa, and reconceptualisations of resilience among women-led social mobilizations. Her scholarship includes publications in African Security, Springer Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, and her book, Globalised Resistance and the Bring Back Our Girls Movement: New Dimensions of Transnational Activism (Routledge, 2025). She has published policy-facing work with Kujenga Amani, Institute for Security Studies, Search for Common Ground, Africa Is A Country, ACCORD, African Feminism, and Nonprofit Quarterly. Dr. Àjàyí has worked across regional and international civil society and policy research institutions, including the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), ODI Global, International Crisis Group (ICG), and the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), contributing to research, policy analysis, and knowledge production across African governance and security contexts. She holds a PhD in International Affairs from the University of Ghana, Legon, and is a three-time recipient of the Social Science Research Council’s APN and Next Gen Fellowship awards.