What motivated you to participate in the Bucerius Summer School? :

At the time I was nominated, I was still working within traditional international counterterrorism and criminal justice reform frameworks, and felt a growing need to step outside those institutional confines to ask harder, more uncomfortable questions: about legitimacy, governance, and who global policy actually serves. Bucerius came at a critical juncture for me, then and now. I was drawn to it for the kind of unfiltered, messy conversations I hoped we could have (and we did): conversations that didn’t shy away from contradiction or from interrogating the frameworks we’ve inherited.

Now, as a consultant working with state and non-state actors across the globe, I find myself still sitting with those same questions, except now, I’m shaping programs and policies that actively contend with them. Whether I’m writing policy papers for major international actors on how to reimagine the Women, Peace and Security agenda through a decolonial and intersectional lens, redesigning CRSV programming to respond more directly to the needs of affected communities, or working to deconstruct and reframe institutional security frameworks, my work continues to center the same questions that drew me to Bucerius in the first place. I carry forward the value of spaces like Bucerius, where the goal isn’t consensus, but clarity. I was looking to engage with peers who weren’t just critiquing the system, but building alternatives rooted in plural knowledge systems, and the political complexities they live and work in. I found that, and it’s shaped how I continue to move through this work.

What new perspectives did you gain during the Summer School, particularly in relation to your work in human rights and counter-extremism? 

Joya: While much of the content echoed debates I’ve already encountered, what stood out was how many participants and speakers, especially those from the Global Majority, were actively pushing back against dominant, reductionist narratives of security, governance, and leadership. These were not abstract critiques, but grounded reflections on how the international system continues to securitize entire regions while simultaneously outsourcing its crises.

As someone who has worked within institutional counter-extremism frameworks, I’ve seen how donor and state-driven models often reproduce the very conditions they claim to address, the Summer School reaffirmed the urgent need to reframe security through decolonial, feminist, and intersectional lenses, not as supplementary themes, but as structural starting points. Any global governance effort that fails to do so is not just limited….it becomes complicit in the harms it seeks to redress.

Was there a particular topic or moment during the Summer School that especially inspired you? 

Joya: One moment that stayed with me came during the final day of debates, when I initiated a conversation around victim hierarchies, a pattern I’ve witnessed repeatedly in working with different survivor groups around the world (a term that itself is increasingly under reflection). I wanted to bring forward the often-unspoken disparities in how certain communities are heard, funded, and centered, while others are invisibilized or even criminalized…often based not on the nature of their suffering, but on race, geography, and geopolitical interest. It turned into one of the most honest and necessary discussions of the program. That was the moment we began to move beyond polished policy language and really interrogate difficult questions: Whose pain is made legible? Whose lives are framed as politically inconvenient?

This conversation echoed a broader observation another participant brought up during the Summer School: the inconsistency in how different global crises were framed. For instance, the war in Ukraine was rightly and unequivocally named as such. But when the discussion shifted to the Middle East, particularly Palestine, the language grew more cautious. Terms like “unpeace” replaced more direct framings of violence or occupation. These linguistic choices reflect deeper structural asymmetries in global governance, where security narratives are selectively applied, and Global Majority voices continue to be sidelined in defining both threat and care. Naming that tension,and holding space for it, was, for me, one of the most meaningful parts of the entire program. Where better than Bucerius to have these discussions?

What insights did you take away from the KSG Leadership Day in Berlin? 

Joya: The KSG Leadership Day was one of the most intellectually generous and unexpected highlights of the program. The sessions at the International Psychoanalytic University offered something rarely explored in global policy circles: the emotional and psychological dimensions of leadership. We unpacked the anatomy of moral courage, and the psychological toll of leading through rupture, particularly in polarized, high-stakes environments.

For someone working in security governance and counter-extremism, these conversations hit close to home. The idea that leadership could be practiced with emotional permeability, without sacrificing clarity or resolve, felt both radical and deeply necessary. William Deresiewicz’s reflections on loneliness and dissent in public life resonated in particular. They articulated what many of us know but rarely admit: that resisting dominant systems comes at a personal cost, and that principled leadership is often practiced in quiet, isolating spaces.

It was also a reminder that systems don’t just shape outcomes, they shape the psyches of those who work within them. These sessions invited us to reconsider what kind of leadership our times require: not just strategic or visionary, but psychologically aware, relational, and capable of sitting with complexity without defaulting to control.

How did you experience the interdisciplinary exchange with participants from different countries? 

Joya: The most meaningful part of Bucerius was the informal undercurrent that emerged between participants who weren’t content with polished leadership soundbites. Particularly with peers who carry the weight of governance challenges in fragile and hybrid systems…there was a shared hunger to reimagine leadership as something less extractive, more rooted in cultural nuance.

The real exchange often happened in the cracks between sessions, in our outings, where we could reflect together. There was something grounding in knowing that many of us were actively resisting frameworks that no longer serve us, and finding language with one another to shape something new.

In your view, what are the most significant Global Leadership Challenges in the near future? 

Joya: One of the most urgent leadership challenges today is the failure to redefine security in a way that responds to people’s lived realities. Much of the international community continues to equate security with militarization, surveillance, and control amidst constant security threats. The original meaning of securus (to be free from care) has been emptied of substance. Instead of working to eliminate structural sources of insecurity, we’re investing in systems that manage them. True leadership requires the ability to disrupt those inherited logics, not reproduce them.

Another profound leadership challenge is the erosion of intellectual and moral courage in policymaking. We are living through a time when political decision-making is increasingly shaped by short-term optics rather than bold, values-driven vision. In the external action of many countries from the Global Minority—from migration policy to arms exports to climate diplomacy—we see a retreat from accountability and a reluctance to name the countries’ own role in perpetuating the very crises they seek to manage.

And perhaps most crucially: we must confront the epistemic imbalance that continues to shape global governance. Who defines the rules? Whose leadership is validated? Until actors from the Global Majority are not only included, but trusted to co-design, co-lead, and reshape institutional agendas, we’re not building leadership, we’re rebranding hierarchy.

Leadership in the years ahead will require more than competence. It will demand a willingness to confront discomfort, redistribute power, and fundamentally rethink what legitimacy means in a world no longer willing to be governed by neocolonial frameworks.

The development of young leaders is crucial for creating sustainable strategies in the fields of rule of law and security. Not only legal but also security and societal aspects must be understood. In your opinion, how important is practical experience in this context? Can the Bucerius Summer School program be helpful in this regard? 

Joya: Experience is critical, but only if we stop privileging institutional experience over lived, local, indigenous one. Someone who has navigated peacebuilding under occupation, or sustained a grassroots response under authoritarianism, brings a kind of leadership that is rich and complex and needed for these spaces. Bucerius will remain a meaningful space for global leadership only if it continues to diversify not just who is in the room, but how knowledge is defined and valued. Its real strength lies in its ability to challenge securitized thinking and elevate alternative frameworks: ones rooted in care, complexity, and equity. If it leans into that potential courageously, it can definitely foster the kind of leadership growth the world urgently needs.

How do you find the overall program of the Bucerius Summer School? Did you miss anything, or do you have suggestions for additions? 

Joya: The program was generous in scope and generous in spirit.I would love to see future editions lean further into themes that reflect the shifting moral and political terrain we’re navigating today. Rather than defaulting to top-down analyses of governance, we need space to explore the politics of refusal, from communities who disengage from dominant systems, to movements building alternative economies and forms of care. We need conversations about how collective grief shapes governance,how people govern amidst the loss of land, language, and political imagination….What would it mean to rewrite foreign policy mandates from the perspective of those historically treated as objects of policy, not authors of it? How are communities in authoritarian or occupation settings reimagining security? And what do justice and repair look like when institutions fail, or when the state itself governs through terror? These themes, alongside deeper exploration of how art, memory, and narrative shape resistance, are not just abstract provocations; they are the political realities many of us work in daily. Bucerius has the potential to be the space that doesn’t just host these conversations,but helps carry them forward.

You volunteer with the Maltese Red Cross and have hobbies such as swimming and abstract art. How do you manage to find time for your passions despite having such an intense job? Do these hobbies help you maintain balance in your professional life? 

Joya: Freediving has taught me more about leadership than I could have ever imagined. The act of descending into silence, holding your breath, and trusting your body’s limits and rhythms ... .there's a metaphor there for every kind of crisis work I’ve ever done. My hobbies are a form of anchoring. In a field saturated with urgency and performance, they remind me to slow down, feel, and listen deeply. That’s where endurance really comes from.

 

We sincerely thank Joya Elias for the open conversation she had with Dr. Sofia Delgado on behalf of the KSG.