Michael Semple is a professor at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast. He studies innovative approaches to peacemaking and engagement with militant Islamic movements in Afghanistan and South Asia. He worked as a political officer on the United Nations team that helped to implement the Bonn Accord in Afghanistan after 2001 and served as deputy to the European Union special representative to Afghanistan from 2004 to 2007. He continues to advise governments and parties involved in the Afghan peace process. From 2009 to 2013, he was a senior research fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and he also participated in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Senior Advisory Group at the United States Institute for Peace. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Quartz and other publications.