Tomáš Žák joined IDEV in January 2019 as a Junior Consultant. Before joining the AfDB, he worked as a Consultant for the Multilateral Diplomacy Programme of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in Geneva. At UNITAR, he worked on the implementation of capacity building workshops for the diplomatic community in Geneva as well as the diplomatic academies of Ministries of Foreign Affairs in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Between 2016 and 2017, instead of doing military service, he chose to join the Swiss civilian service, working with the NGO Terre des Hommes Suisse (TdH), in the International Affairs Office of the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and in social services in a foster home for teenagers (FOJ).
Mr. Žák has also worked for a variety of development and humanitarian organizations including the Standing Commission of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (Standcom), the Bretton Woods Project (BWP), Justice Africa (JA) and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). He also worked as a graduate attaché researcher at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA), an academic research institute based in Nairobi, Kenya.
He holds an MSc in African Studies from St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford and a BA in Development Studies and African Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. At Master’s level, his academic research focused on a counter-terrorism operation conducted in 2014 by the Kenyan government in a neighbourhood of Nairobi, whilst for his Bachelor’s he examined the causes of Kenyan 2007-2008 post-election violence. A revised version of his Master’s dissertation was published in a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies on youth politics in Kenya, whilst an article based on his Bachelor’s thesis was published online with Think Africa Press. He has also published an article comparing the political philosophy of Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah in a special issue in of the Journal of African Cultural Studies on African philosophy.