Dr Olaf Bachmann is a Visiting practitioner as part of the Practice of Leadership programme with the African Leadership Centre.

He holds a PhD in War Studies and a MA (Distinction) in War in the Modern World from King's. He is co-founder of a consultancy in the fields of security governance and institution building, and relevant publishing. 

As a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s, the focus of his research and writing is on the African Peace and Security Architecture, and the history and contemporary state of African military and warfare.

He spent many years of field research in Central Africa, mainly in Gabon, Cameroon, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Congo. He is member of the Royal African Society, and of the War Studies Africa research group at King’s, where he teaches at the ALC on Governance of Security and State Formation.

His teaching and research focuses on subjects including the governance of security, and leadership theory with an emphasis on the developing world. War Studies is his second career after many years in publishing and the book trade. 

Beyond academia, Olaf performs managerial tasks in a Spain based consulting company, Kormoran 2012 S.L., which is organisational in character and covers legal, financial and logistic tasks, as well as preparatory research for tender procurement relevant to this consultancy’s clientele.