Dr. Mehri Hilton is an Iranian-born British researcher, peacebuilding practitioner, and educator. She is the originator of the Proxi-Temporal Peacebuilding Framework and the Founder and President of the International Institute for Peacebuilding in Active Conflict (IIPAC).
Hilton’s work is deeply shaped by her lived experience of the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, experiences that were later enriched by her academic studies and professional practice in peacebuilding. This unique combination has given her an incisive understanding of how conflict transforms individuals, communities, and institutions. It has also inspired a career dedicated to finding practical ways to strengthen resilience, protect human dignity, and create opportunities for peace, even amid the uncertainty and violence of active conflict.
Throughout her career, Hilton has worked alongside governments, international organisations, and local partners across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe to strengthen human rights, civil justice, and peacebuilding. Much of this work has taken place in politically sensitive environments where communities face instability, oppression, and the lasting effects of conflict and violence.
Supporting organisations in these complex settings has also required innovative digital solutions. Hilton has designed highly secure digital platforms and e-learning systems for organisations operating in high-risk environments where staff and participants face oppression, surveillance, and persecution.
Although much of her work has involved designing secure digital systems, her deepest commitment has been to the organisations and vulnerable populations they support. She has monitored and evaluated complex human rights and civil society programmes thus helping organisations strengthen their effectiveness and long-term impact in some of the Middle East and North Africa’s most politically sensitive and dangerous regions.
Fluent in Farsi, Dari, and English, Hilton has worked internationally with organisations including Oxfam, Open Doors International, HIVOS, the BBC, and Al Jazeera English.
Alongside her international work, she serves as a Magistrate in the United Kingdom’s criminal justice system, and earned her PhD from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies/Middlesex University in Peacebuilding. She is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster and is an active Rotarian. Outside her professional life she enjoys painting and walking the English countryside with Daisy, her Old English Sheepdog.
As IIPAC’s Founder and Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Hilton continues to bring together scholars, practitioners, and communities in the shared pursuit of a simple but powerful belief: that even in the midst of conflict, there are always opportunities to build peace.