Richard Barltrop is a consultant and researcher, specialised in political, economic, conflict and peace analysis on the Sudans and countries in the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel. He has worked for the United Nations Development Programme in Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Somalia, the Sudans, Yemen and elsewhere, and for the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan and the UN political mission in Yemen. His areas of specialisation include mediation, conflict resolution and peacebuilding, and the role of humanitarian and development aid in countries at war.

His book Darfur and the International Community: The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Sudan (IB Tauris, 2011) won the Toyin Falola Africa Book Award in 2011, awarded by the Association of Global South Studies. He has worked as an adviser on negotiations and has written on peace processes and security issues in Burundi and Sudan for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (Geneva), and on peacebuilding in the Sudans for International Alert (London) and the Life and Peace Institute (Stockholm). He has also worked as a consultant for UN Women, the EU and the UK Stabilisation Unit, and is a member of the steering committee of the Oxford Network of Peace Studies (OxPeace). In 2015 he was the Sir William Luce Visiting Fellow at Durham University. He is a trustee of the Sudanese Programme.

Richard has written for the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Oxford Analytica and the Economist Intelligence Unit. He has travelled extensively in the Sahara, the Sahel and the Middle East, including by land from Sudan to Mauritania and from Algeria to Niger, and has lived for periods in Libya, South Sudan, Sudan and Syria. He is fluent in Arabic and French, and has a DPhil in International Relations, an MPhil in Middle Eastern Studies and a BA in Classics from the University of Oxford.