Anna Kneifel, MA

Anna Kneifel is a scholar-practitioner working at the intersection of humanitarian action, international relations, and organisational decision-making. Over the past decade, she has worked for the United Nations and the World Bank, most recently as a Senior Development Officer, in and on conflict-affected settings across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. She was based for four years inside Syria and Libya during the civil wars in both countries, and conducted frequent field missions to countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe. Her thematic expertise spans humanitarian action, forced displacement, and humanitarian-development cooperation.

Anna has been a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative since 2024. Her work at HHI focuses on how humanitarian organisations make difficult decisions under conditions of uncertainty, political constraint, and ethical ambiguity. She has developed an original, case-based approach to teaching humanitarian decision-making, drawing on real-world dilemmas from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Liberia, South Sudan, and Syria. Most recently, she taught these cases at a summer school at the University of Oxford, organised in collaboration with the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes).

Anna holds a master’s degree from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from Freie Universität Berlin, including a year of study at the University of Cambridge. In addition to her affiliation with HHI, she has held visiting fellowships at Cambridge Judge Business School and St John’s College, University of Oxford.