Marion Volkmann-Brandau bring with her more than 15 years of experience in human rights, women rights, criminal investigations, and transitional processes, mainly in West and Central Africa. Throughout her career she has worked as a Human Rights Specialist for different UN agencies, including for MINUSCA, MINUSMA and UN Women. Prior to joining the Dakar Hub, she worked as a consultant for UNICEF to support the Malian Truth Commission to document and analyse human rights violations committed against children as well as for the UNDP Crisis Bureau as part of the Sahel Security Analysis Team. From 2006 to 2008, she was part of the executive office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour at OHCHR.

Marion also worked for civil society organisations. From 2015 to 2017 she collaborated with Human Rights Watch during the trial of former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré in Dakar, focusing on sexual and gender-based violence. She continued working with Human Rights Watch until 2019, as the Coordinator and Lead Investigator of the Campaign to bring former President of The Gambia Yahya Jammeh to Justice. In 2011 to 2014, she headed The Carter Center office in Tunisia working on the constitution-making process and elections. In 2002-2003, she worked for the International Tribunal for the former-Yugoslavia and was deployed to Srebrenica as by the OSCE a Human Rights Officer from 2004 to 2005.

Marion holds a LLM in Law from the Sorbonne University and a Masters in International Relations from the Freie University Berlin. She speaks German, French, English fluently and is learning Wolof.