SafeGround National Committee

SafeGround is run by a National Committee made up of dedicated volunteers with diverse skills and experience. We are a team of researchers, photographers, educators, nobel prize winners, finance specialists, writers, students, and activists. Our researchers are experts, who have decades of experience researching landmines, cluster munitions, and other explosive remnants of war.

Our team is based in locations across Australia and internationally. We meet once a month by Skype or teleconference and conduct the majority of our day-to-day communication by email. Each year we hold a 2 day residential conference to plan campaign actions for the year ahead. Sometimes sub-committees work on a particular issue, always reporting to the National Committee where final decisions are made.

Committee Members

Mette Eliseussen

National Coordinator

Mette began work in mine action in 1989. She co-founded and was part of the Afghan Campaign to Ban Landmines when she was a member of the 1997 ICBL Nobel Peace Prize winning team. In 1997 she received the ‘Barn av Jorden’ award for her work with children in Kabul during war.

Angela Allpress

Treasurer

Angela joined the WRNZAF in the late 1960s as a Technical and Recreational Librarian. She returned to high school in her early thirties, completing one year’s University Entrance studies which included accounting and history, and she developed a passion for both. She attended Continuing Education Courses at Auckland University in Education and Psychology.

Matilda Byrne

Campaign to Stop Killer Robots Coordinator

Current PhD candidate with RMIT University and graduate of Masters of International Relations at the University of Melbourne, Matilda has particular interest in security issues and how arms control and disarmament among other peaceful policy can combine with strategic policy. Having researched small arms and light weapons, Matilda was led to SafeGround’s work.

Gordon Stanger

Public Officer & Climate Driven Migration Coordinator

Gordon’s professional experience has been largely as a water resources / climate change specialist.

As a former senior academic (Flinders Uni), he has been an Australian Academy of Science exchange fellow and author of several books.

His subsequent consultancy work has included

John Rodsted

Pacific Islands Program Coodinator

John has over 25 years’ experience working in mine action. He has worked in many countries around the world documenting the legacies of war. The photos he took of cluster bomb strikes in Lebanon in2006, which he took to the Norwegian Government, were the catalyst for action which led to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. John is a member and official photographer to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). His photographic skills were recognised world wide when he was a member of the 1997 ICBL Nobel Peace Prize winning team.

John Heathers

Having had a lifelong interest in the use of explosives and weapons John retired in 2003 after a 30 year engineering career with Telstra and joined SafeGround (formally the Australian Network to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munitions) in Sydney in 2004. Wishing to do something practical in retirement he worked with an NGO interested in ridding the world of landmines for 11 years, while over that time visiting minefields in a number of Asian countries.

Miriam Deprez

Secretary & National Committee Member

Nicole Lamond

National Committee Member

Elyse Cunningham

National Committee Member

Heather Faulkner

National Committee Member

Jeanne Wills

National Committee Member