Marcus Cox, PhD
Director
As a Founder and Director of Agulhas, Marcus leads the Conflict, Crises and Fragility hub. He is Technical Director for Agulhas’s portfolio of work with the UK’s aid watchdog, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), and the Multilateral Organisations Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN). He has led numerous ICAI reviews – including a 2024 review of the UK response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and has provided quality assurance for over 50 other reviews, given him an unparalleled breadth of knowledge across the international development spectrum. For MOPAN, he has led an organisational assessment of OHCHR and a study on humanitarian reform. Through the MOPAN association, Marcus has developed a keen interest in multilateral reforms, providing research and analysis on UN80 reforms and the impact of UN-wide liquidity crisis. He is currently team leader of a UN system-wide evaluation of the UN development system’s approach to SDG implementation.
Marcus has been a senior adviser to the African Development Bank for the past 15 years, supporting policy and strategic development, corporate results systems and the drafting of high-profile publications – including the Bank’s Strategy for Addressing Fragility and Building Resilience in Africa 2022-2026 and its Ten-Year Strategy 2024-2033. Other clients include UN agencies, bilateral donors and foundations.
An international lawyer by training, Marcus began his international career in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he was instrumental in designing the mechanism for restoring the property rights of those displaced by the conflict. He was a founding member and senior editor of the European Stability Initiative, a think tank specialising in Southeastern Europe, and completed a Ph.D. at Cambridge University on the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. As a consultant, he specialised in development effectiveness, leading the independent monitoring team of the Hanoi Core Statement in Vietnam. He has carried out numerous reviews and evaluation on themes such as security and justice, trafficking in persons, institution building and post-conflict reconstruction. He is an expert in political economy analysis, having led PEA studies on a wide range of countries, sectors and issues. Marcus is a skilled writer and editor whose written work is in considerable demand.
Key work skills
Governance, conflict, justice and security, humanitarian policy, peace building, capacity building, human rights, political economy analysis, evaluation methodology, organisational assessment, multilateral reform
Other interests
Marcus is a keen amateur musician, performing regularly with the City of London Choir.
