Zafer Nahhas is a Syrian activist and researcher at the Syrian Centre for Policy Research, with years of experience promoting dialogue with refugee and diaspora communities. After founding and leading Deepening Awareness and Restoring Bridges, a peacebuilding organization, he resigned in 2019 and started working with several local and international organizations in designing, leading and facilitating peacebuilding and dialogue programmes in Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and the UK.

Zafer was awarded the Civil Society Leadership Award by the Open Society Foundations in 2019 and is currently a member of the Thematic Working Group on Civil Society, under the direction of the UN special envoy for Syria.

Zafer holds two master’s degrees. One in public policy from the University of Nottingham, focusing on migration policies and the secondary movement of refugees; and one in reconciliation and peacebuilding from the Centre for Religion, Reconciliation and Peace at the University of Winchester, focusing on collective memory and identity politics.