Herdis Sigurgrimsdottir developed an interest for conflict studies while writing on foreign affairs for TV, radio and print media in her native Iceland. She was seconded by the Icelandic Foreign Ministry to Baghdad in 2007 and to Kabul in 2008, and has since held independent consultancies in Afghanistan. She has an MSc in Comparative Politics (Conflict Studies) from the London School of Economics and wrote her thesis on Afghan warlords on a scholarship at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. An avid hiker, skier and ice climber, Herdis has also guided hiking tours in the mountainous wilderness of Iceland and Greenland.