Menas Associates: about Menas > organisation

Menas Senior Associates

Dr. Robert Bradnock

Prof. Jeremy Keenan

Bijan Khajehpour

Georges D Landau

Prof. Keith McLachlan

Alison Pargeter

Paul Sampson

Andrew Symon

Dr Robert Bradnock

As a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Kings College London, Robert Bradnock has an international reputation for his research in geopolitics, development and the environment with special reference to South Asia. He has carried out a wide range of consultancy work, including for Menas Associates, and has intimate first hand knowledge of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Prof. Jeremy Keenan

Jeremy Keenan is a social anthropologist, geographer, political scientist, occasional archaeologist and film producer and a recognised world authority on the Sahara. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, Director of the Saharan Studies Programme and Senior Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia.

He has over 150 academic publications to his name. His main work, The Tuareg. People of Ahaggar was first published in 1977 (Allen Lane, Penguin), republished in 2002 (Sickle Moon Books) and is going into a third edition in 2006. His other books on the Sahara include: Sahara Man. Travelling with the Tuareg, first published in 2001 and republished in paperback in 2003; The Lesser Gods of the Sahara, (Frank Cass, Routledge 2004) and The Sahara: Past Present and Future (Routledge 2006). His latest book, Alice in the Sahara: Moving Mirrors and the USA War on Terror in the Sahara is being published by Pluto (London) in 2006.

He has produced and presented three films on the Algerian Sahara: Into the Unknown, Travelling with Tuareg and The Lesser Gods. Two further documentaries on Libya – A Forgotten Civilisation (The Garamantes) and Waters under the Earth are currently in production.

A recent TLS review describes him, "Jeremy Keenan, like the Tuareg, is his own man: brave, authoritative and master of his environment by dint of scholarship and experience"

Bijan Khajehpour

Bijan Khajehpour is the chairman and co-founder of the Tehran-based Atieh Group of companies, (www.atiehgroup.com)

Bijan studied business administration as well as economics in Germany and the UK and has had professional working experience in Germany, Australia, Canada and Iran. He is currently finishing his Doctorate of Business Administration at the International School of Management in Paris. Over the past 12 years, he has mainly worked as a strategic consultant analysing the country's political and economic developments, and their impact on the business climate.

Bijan edits Menas Associates' Iran Strategic Focus and has published many articles on Iran's political and economic developments in Iranian and international journals.

Georges D Landau

Managing director, Menas do Brasil

Georges is the founding editor of Menas Associates' Brazil Focus and is the Sao Paulo based resident managing director of Menas do Brasil Ltda.

Educated in law and public administration in Brazil and the Netherlands, he holds an MPA. and a LLM from Harvard University, and has taught international economic relations around the world.

After a stint in Brazil's foreign service and several government appointments, he pursued a career in international organisations. Between 1983-1989 he was the Paris-based European representative of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and had consulting assignments in Latin America, and with the World Bank. In 2001, he was a consultant to the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for a major study on foreign direct investment in Brazil. Has published widely on topics of law, economics and international affairs.

Professor Keith McLachlan

An Emeritus Professor at London University's School of Oriental & African Studies, Keith McLachlan is internationally renowned as a development expert with specialist knowledge and experience of the Middle East and North Africa. In additional to his research and lecturing role he has also undertaken many consulting assignments in the Gulf region, and he has close knowledge of the development parameters affecting resource use in the region.
Keith McLachlan is a founder and former Chairman of Menas Associates.
back to top

Alison Pargeter

Alison Pargeter studied at the University of Hull and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is a fellow at Kings College London and her main area of expertise is North Africa, with a particular focus on Libya. She has been conducting research into the region for a number of years. She also works on North African Islamist communities in Europe and on issues related to political violence and terrorism. Alison also spent time working for the BBC as a World Affairs Analyst.

Paul Sampson

As a senior correspondent for Energy Intelligence, Paul Sampson is a London-based journalist and analyst specialising in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Has written extensively on oil-related issues in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia while based in Dubai from 2000-2005 and has travelled throughout the region. A fluent Russian speaker, Paul is also a specialist in Russia and the Caspian and was managing editor of the Nefte Compass newsletter in the mid-1990s. Has written on the region for other publications, such as Prospect Magazine, Private Eye and The Guardian

Andrew Symon

Menas Senior Associate - Southeast and Northeast Asia

A focus of Andrew's work is the energy, mining/natural resources and infrastructure sectors as well as analysis of more general political, economic, and social issues and conditions in Asia concerning and affecting both business planning and government policy.

Andrew, who is an Australian citizen currently based in Singapore, has been living in Asia since 1992 employed as a consultant & researcher for both business planning and public sector/public policy projects, and as a journalist managing and writing for various publications. He was based in Jakarta from 1992 to 1997.

In Australia, he has worked in government at state and federal levels, in the national parliament in Canberra on a senator's staff, and in print and radio journalism.

Andrew has a first degree in history and a second in economics from the University of Adelaide. He was a recipient of Australian government journalist scholarships to research and write in Japan (1984) and in Indonesia (1992).

From 2003 to early 2006, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) at the National University of Singapore, where he completed a book about energy sector development and government policy in Southeast Asia, Fuelling Southeast Asia's Growth: the Energy Challenge.

Since 1996, he has also been an associate of the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, a joint research and consultancy arm of the University of Adelaide and Flinders University in South Australia.

Andrew is a Bahasa Indonesia / Malay speaker.