Elizabeth Sellwood is leading a PRIO Cyprus Centre research project on the political and policy implications of climate change in the states of the Eastern Mediterranean. She has worked in this region for over a decade as an analyst and practitioner of international affairs. Past research projects have included analysis of United Nations conflict prevention and peacekeeping capabilities in the Middle East, work on institutional reform in Lebanon, and the politics of Palestinian state-building.

Elizabeth has served the United Nations in humanitarian and peace operations in the Middle East and Cyprus. She has also worked on UN reform, including the use of information in peacekeeping operations, practices of political analysis in the UN, internal management issues, and implementation of peace and security reform proposals. She co-founded and ran a "low level panel" of UN staff members and others, which contributed analysis to the reform efforts led by the Deputy Secretary-General in 2005.

Between 2001-3 Elizabeth was an adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee in the UK House of Commons. She also worked for Oxfam in the Balkans and Brussels, and in 1995-99 held research positions at Chatham House and Cambridge University.