Peter Emerson is the director of the de Borda Institute, an NGO which promotes the use of inclusive voting procedures, especially in conflict zones. The child of a Southern Irish Protestant father and a Northern English Catholic mother, he has been based in Belfast for the last thirty five years. As part of this work, he has travelled extensively, observing several elections for the osce, and his latest deployment was as a translator for the eu Monitoring Mission for South Ossetia.  In between such duties, he has lectured in countless universities and other institutes, throughout Europe, in East and Southern Africa, and across the United States. Since 1990 has published extensively on consesus politics in newspapers and books.