Theresa Betancourt
Theresa Betancourt is the inaugural Salem Professor in Global Practice at the Boston College School of Social Work and director of the Research Program on Children and Adversity (RPCA). Her work focuses on the psychosocial impact of adversity on children and families, resilience, and mental health services research. She is principal investigator of an intergenerational study of war-affected youth in Sierra Leone and leads implementation science research in Rwanda to examine strategies for scaling and sustaining quality in an evidence-based home visiting intervention to promote early childhood development and prevent violence. Using community-based participatory research methods, she has co-developed similar family strengthening interventions for resettling refugee families in the U.S. raising school-age children. Betancourt has also served as an advisor for UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, Amnesty International, the US Institute of Peace, and the World Health Organization, and served as an expert of the International Criminal Court. Her new book, “Shadows into Light: A Generation of Former Child Soldiers Comes of Age,” was released January 2025 by Harvard University Press.
Roddy Brett
Roddy Brett is an associate professor of peace and conflict studies at the University of Bristol and director of impact at the School for Sociology, Politics and International Studies. He is an anthropologist and political scientist whose work focuses on genocide and political violence, peace negotiations, post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding, particularly at the local level. He also works on transitional justice and reconciliation. He has comparative regional expertise in Latin America, also broadening work towards Ukraine, Lebanon and Northern Ireland.
Brett has combined his scholarly career with work as a senior practitioner. During thirteen years living in Latin America, he acted as Advisor to the UNDP and the UNHCHR and as Advisor on Indigenous Affairs to the Norwegian Embassy in Guatemala. He worked with the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action in Guatemala, as a member of the original team that prepared the evidence against former dictator General Ríos Montt, leading to his conviction in May 2013 for eighty years for genocide and crimes against humanity. In 2015, he led a UN investigation into the role of the victims’ delegations during the Santos-FARC-EP peace process. He has just finished a large ESRC project exploring reconciliation and conflict in Colombia, Lebanon and Northern Ireland. He is the founder of the network, FuturePeace, which is participating in the United Nations’ consultation process aimed at shaping the Pact for the Future. His most recent monograph is Victims-Centred peacemaking: Colombia’s Santos-FARC-EP Peace Negotiations (Bristol University Press, 2024).
Jade Cooper
Jade Cooper currently serves as the deputy director of the Americas at the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a global think tank dedicated to developing metrics to analyze peace and conflict and to quantify its economic value. Prior to IEP, she worked at the United Nations Development Programme in policy and programming, where she specialized in Small Island Developing States. She has also worked as a policy advisor at the New Zealand Mission to the United Nations in New York.
Cooper started her career as a litigation lawyer specializing in government law. She worked as a lawyer for the UK government in London on a specialist Brexit-focused litigation team and, before relocating to the Northern Hemisphere, worked as a public law litigation lawyer for Auckland City Council in her native New Zealand. She holds bachelor’s degrees from the University of Otago in New Zealand, as well as a Master of Public Administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Mengistu Assefa Dadi
Mengistu Assefa Dadi is a dedicated political and conflict analyst from Ethiopia, with extensive experience in conflict, peacebuilding, policy research, and designing peace dialogue projects in fragile and divided societies. His work focuses on mitigating conflict through inclusive dialogue, advancing sustainable governance practices, and implementing innovative strategies to address socio-political challenges in Ethiopia.
Throughout his career, he has held several impactful roles. At the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy, he served as both head of programs and programs manager, leading initiatives to promote human rights, media freedom, and democratic governance, while managing teams and delivering strategic outcomes. His work has also included roles as a consultant and political analyst for the Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, where he contributed to conflict resolution efforts, and as project manager for the East African Initiative for Change, managing several projects on conflict prevention and inter-party dialogue. He has consulted various local and international organizations on peace and conflict issues on Ethiopia.
Frederic Deycard
Frederic Deycard is associate director for Mali and the Sahel at The Carter Center in Atlanta. He manages the Peace Through Health Initiative in central Mali, which promotes community-led peacebuilding and access to health in conflict-ridden areas; the Climate and Conflict Resilience Initiative in the Sahel, a data-driven approach to climate-related conflict prevention; and the Mali Mapping Project. Before joining the Carter Center, Frederic worked as a consultant and researcher on conflicts in Niger, Mali, and Chad and is an expert in political violence, rebellion movements, peacebuilding, and conflict analysis. He holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology and a master’s in conflict analysis from the Political Studies Institute of Bordeaux, France, and a master’s in contemporary history from the Michel Montaigne University of Bordeaux.
Laura Dunne
Dr. Laura Dunne is a chartered psychologist and reader at the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work (SSESW), Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests lie in three main areas: child wellbeing in educational settings, early child health and development, and program development and evaluation. Dunne has a particular interest in low- and middle-income countries, with a focus on childhood development and peacebuilding. She has extensive experience conducting both quantitative and qualitative research and is interested in national and international engagement and advocacy. She is a deputy director of the Innovation Zones at Queen’s and a fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice under the theme of legacy and religion, arts and peacebuilding. She is also a member of the Early Childhood Peace Consortium’s expert support group, a global movement to build more peaceful societies, pillared by science- and practice-based evidence.
Jessica Faieta
Jessica Faieta is a Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson School. She is a Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Colombia since April 2019. She is also the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations System in Colombia. Jessica has more than 28 years of distinguished service in the United Nations. Prior to this appointment, from March 2018 to March 2019, she was the Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Deputy Head of the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia. Since 2014, she was UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Previously she served as Director of UNDP in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 Earthquake; She led the UN in El Salvador and Belize. She also served in the Executive Office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and in the Office of the UNDP Administrator. Jessica has also had assignments in Argentina, Cuba, Guyana, and Panama. A National from Ecuador, Jessica holds a Master’s in International Affairs, and an MBA from Columbia University in New York. She was a 2006 World Fellow at Yale.
Cara Fallon
Cara Kiernan Fallon is a Lecturer in Global Health at the Jackson School of Global Affairs and the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) of the Global Health Studies Program. She teaches courses in global health, ethics, and medical history and policy, and she advises the Global Health Scholars in the Multidisciplinary Academic Program.
She completed her postdoctoral training in Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also appointed as a Fellow in the Center for Public Health Initiatives and a Clark Scholar at the Penn Memory Center. She received her PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University and MPH from the Yale School of Public Health. During and after the financial crisis of 2008, she worked in investment banking and investment management at Goldman Sachs. She earned a BA from Yale in History of Science/History of Medicine, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
Combining her training in history, ethics, public health, and industry, her research analyzes the marginalization of the elderly from basic frameworks of health, disparities in chronic disease, and the intersections of aging, gender, and disability studies. Her current book project, “Extending the End,” examines cultural aspirations and medical innovations for anti-aging efforts in the United States and the world.
Pamina Firchow
Pamina Firchow is an associate professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and the founding executive director of Everyday Peace Indicators, a nonprofit organization dedicated to research and evaluation in the development and peacebuilding sector. In her research, she focuses on the international accompaniment of communities affected by mass violence and the localization of international development and peacebuilding aid. She has published extensively on participatory approaches to the design, measurement, and evaluation of transitional justice, reconciliation, and peacebuilding initiatives in leading peer-reviewed journals. Her award-winning book, “Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local Voices in Measurement and Evaluation after War,” exemplifies her innovative work in this field.
In addition to her academic and nonprofit leadership roles, Firchow serves as an advisor to several international organizations, including USIP, USAID, the World Bank, and the United Nations. She also serves as a consultant to various international organizations, including USAID and the United Nations. She served as a USIP Senior Jennings Randolph Fellow in 2016 and a Fulbright Fellow in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2020. Firchow earned her PhD from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Since 1999, she has worked as a scholar-practitioner for non-governmental organizations and academic institutions on finding ways to use local knowledge to improve the way we respond to conflict.
Kholood Khair
Kholood Khair is the founder and director of Confluence Advisory, a “think and do tank” formerly based in Khartoum that works on three priority policy areas: peace and security, economy, and governance. Kholood also hosted and co-produced Spotlight 249, Sudan’s first English language political discussion and debate show aimed at young Sudanese people. Her career has spanned the fields of research, aid programming and policy in Sudan and across the Horn of Africa. She has written research and analysis pieces for several international publications and has provided analyses for research and policy institutions worldwide.
Kaveh Khoshnood
Kaveh Khoshnood is an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies at the Yale School of Public Health and an executive committee member of the Yale Council on Middle East Studies. He is co-founder of Yale Violence and Health Study Group and a faculty member of the Program on Conflict, Resiliency and Health at the Yale McMillan Center. Dr. Khoshnood is trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has more than two decades of domestic and international experience in HIV prevention research among drug users and other at-risk populations, including its ethical aspects. He is the principal investigator of a NIH/Fogarty International Center Research Ethics Training and Curriculum Development Program with China. Dr. Khoshnood is actively engaged with several research projects in Lebanon with a broad focus on the epidemiology and prevention of HIV/AIDS and substance use among Lebanese-born and displaced populations. He teaches a course at Yale School of Public Health, Responding to Violent Conflict: Epidemiological Methods & Public Health Interventions, which focuses on how epidemiological methods are applied to understand specific health consequences of violent conflicts, including infectious diseases, mental health, maternal/child health, and chronic health problems. The course has a focus on the Middle East and North Africa region.
David Khoudour
David Khoudour is a senior development economist and human mobility expert with more than 25 years of experience conducting data-driven and policy-oriented research, and advising decision-makers in governments and international organizations. As global human mobility adviser within UNDP’s Crisis Bureau in New York, he spearheaded the organization’s work on migration and forced displacement. Prior to this, he worked as regional human mobility adviser at the UNDP Regional Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean in Panama and as adviser for migration and development at the UNDP Colombia Office, supporting the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia in its response to the Venezuelan displacement crisis.
Before joining UNDP in 2018, Khoudour was the head of the Migration and Skills Unit at the OECD Development Centre in Paris, where he managed several policy-oriented research initiatives in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Until 2010, he was a researcher at CEPII, a French economic think tank, and a lecturer at HEC Paris, the University Paris Nanterre and Sciences Po, from where he holds a Ph.D. in economics. David was also a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley, as well as a professor of economics and the head of the observatory on international migration at the Universidad Externado de Colombia in Bogota. He has been a Morse College Fellow at Yale University since December 2024.
Illana Lancaster
Illana Lancaster is the director of higher education engagement in the civic engagement and scholarship program at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). She is an educator, trainer and researcher with over 25 years of experience in the field of comparative and international education and training policy and practice. Lancaster joined USIP in 2015 as senior program officer on the curriculum and training design team, where she led several initiatives and programs, including conflict management training for peacekeepers, security sector capacity development, educational institutional capacity development, and participatory action research for peacebuilding.
Prior to joining USIP, Lancaster was an assistant professor in the international training and education program at American University. Her areas of specialization include curriculum and training design, professional development of educators and trainers, international education policy and participatory research. She has a long-standing personal and professional interest in Africa and has been studying, learning, teaching, training and researching on the continent since the early 1990s. Lancaster earned a bachelor’s in African and African American studies and English literature from the University of Virginia, a master’s in secondary education from George Washington University, and a doctorate in international education policy from the University of Maryland.
Louisa Lombard
Louisa Lombard is a cultural anthropologist who studies African borderland areas where the state is largely absent, and a range of actors govern. Her main fieldwork interlocutors are among the region’s men-in-arms, such as anti-poaching guards, rebels, and soldiers. Lombard is the author of “State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic” (2016) and “Hunting Game: Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic” (2020). She is currently completing a book manuscript about military peacekeepers in Africa and the ethical dilemmas they face as they attempt to intervene aggressively for the sake of humanitarian aims like protecting civilians. At Yale, Lombard co-convenes the MacMillan Center Political Violence and its Legacies workshop and is a member of the executive board of the Program on Agrarian Studies. She is also a co-editor of HAU: The Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
Jaser Abu Mousa
Jaser Abu Mousa is a Yale Peace Fellow examining how Gaza’s postwar reconstruction can reflect Palestinians’ priorities while repairing the social fabric of society. Most recently, he was a program officer working for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Gaza, Palestine until the breakout of the current war in October 2023. During the war, Mousa lost his wife, Heba, and two children, Hmaid (18) and Abdulrahman (8), and left Gaza with his remaining two children, Abdallah and Sham, for treatment in the United Arab Emirates.
Prior to his work with SDC, Mousa served in the UN Department of Safety and Security; working under immense pressure during the 2014 war to report incidents, he coordinated and communicated movements and followed intense political developments. Prior to that, he worked as a social worker for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the aftermath of the 2009 war, including leading a team of 50 social workers to run a poverty survey in the area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. He also led a team of engineers to verify the work of a European contribution known as the Private Sector Reconstruction in Gaza. From 2006-2009, Mousa worked extensively as a political researcher in a Gaza-based think tank; during this period, he reported on and analyzed Hamas’ rise to power in Gaza.
Katie Murphy
Katie Murphy is the director for early childhood development and strategic initiatives at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and has over 20 years of experience working in the field of early childhood development, education, and sustainable development. She began her career as a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador, where she lived in a rural community for two years teaching and developing health education and women’s income generation projects. Murphy started working with the IRC in 2005 in northeastern Chad, supporting Darfurian refugees to build and improve educational and recreational programs for children and youth. She served as deputy director of the Global Master’s in Development Practice Secretariat at the Earth Institute at Columbia University and returned to work at the IRC in 2015, where she has led the development of IRC’s early childhood development programming in conflict and crisis settings. Murphy served as the technical lead for the design of Ahlan Simsim, which received the inaugural 100&Change award from the MacArthur Foundation. Katie has a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies in human development and an M.P.H. from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University.
Liam O’Hare
Liam O’Hare is a Mitchell Institute fellow and principal research fellow in the School of Social Sciences Education and Social Work at Queen’s University Belfast. He is director of Queen’s Innovation Zones, where he leads several projects focused on arts and peacebuilding. He is also principal investigator on a project with the Ulster Museum looking at museum education, peacebuilding and creativity. O’Hare also has a wide network of international collaborators in universities, including Yale, National University of Kharkiv Ukraine, Stellenbosch University and University of the Witwatersrand, working on peacebuilding projects in conflict-affected communities across the world.
Babatunde Omilola
Babatunde Omilola manages the African Development Bank’s multi-billion-dollar response to the COVID-19 pandemic to save lives and livelihoods throughout Africa and to help African countries strengthen their health systems, stabilize their economies, and alleviate the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. A global development leader, he served as head of development planning with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in New York and led the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on the monitoring and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally. He also co-chaired the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Task Force on Global Food and Nutrition Security Technical Team. Omilola was UNDP’s regional practice leader for poverty reduction and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa and UNDP’s chief economist and head of policy and strategy in South Africa. He was also the Africa-wide coordinator with the International Food Policy Research Institute. He handled the relationship of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations with the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. He has visited and delivered development assistance in over 80 countries worldwide in Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. Omilola was selected as a Fellow of Comparative Research Program for preventing and eradicating poverty by the International Social Science Council in 2014.
Catherine Panter-Brick
Catherine Panter-Brick is the Bruce A. and Davi-Ellen Chabner Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs. She holds a joint appointment in the Jackson School of Global Affairs and the Department of Anthropology. She is the head of Morse College and the chair of the Council of Heads of Colleges at Yale University.
Panter-Brick leads initiatives to develop sustained, equitable partnerships across research, practice, and policy. Her research and program evaluations with Afghan and Syrian refugees are leading examples of systems-level work on child and adolescent development, mental health, and social cohesion in war-affected communities. She received the Lucy Mair Medal, awarded by the Royal Anthropology Institute to honor excellence in the application of anthropology to the active recognition of human dignity.
On the issues of peacebuilding, resilience and mental health, Panter-Brick has been a keynote speaker at the United Nations, contributed to international media broadcasts, and presented at the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and the United States Institute of Peace. Her work with Syrian refugee youth in Jordan is an example of research conducted to learn how interventions can alleviate stress, boost resilience, and improve lives in war-affected communities. It has been showcased in the award-winning documentary, Terror and Hope: The Science of Resilience, broadcasted on PBS television networks, and funded by elrha, the global research program informing decision-making in health research in humanitarian crises.
Panter-Brick has published more than 170 peer-reviewed scientific publications in the biomedical, health, and social sciences. She has coedited eight books, notably Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of Practice and Pathways to Peace; two impact case studies on mental health support and >good practice in research in humanitarian contexts; and four policy briefs on sustainable peacebuilding, fathers and peace and equity, religion and social justice, and resilience.
At Yale, Panter-Brick directs the Global Health Studies Multidisciplinary Academic Program at the Jackson School and the Program on Conflict, Resilience, and Health at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Her teaching at Yale includes interdisciplinary courses on global health equity, humanitarian interventions, conflict and resilience.
Nilakshi Parndigamage
Nilakshi Parndigamage serves as the vice provost for strategic initiatives and chief of staff in the provost’s office at Yale University. She helps advance university priorities in the areas of academics, development, facilities, finance, and personnel, and assists with the development and drafting of university policy. In close collaboration with academic leaders and the Office of Development, she also designs and executes strategic initiatives that support the university’s major academic priorities. Prior to joining the provost’s office, Parndigamage was the dean of Ezra Stiles College and a lecturer of political science, teaching a course on wrongful convictions and criminal justice reform, and worked extensively with students, faculty, and administrators across the university.
Outside of her experience at Yale, Parndigamage has worked at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague, the International Center for Transitional Justice in Cape Town, and at the Institute for International Law and Human Rights in Washington, D.C. and Baghdad. Parndigamage, who is from Sri Lanka, is a fellow of Ezra Stiles College and an advisory board member to the Dwight Hall Center for Public Service and Social Justice at Yale. She received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and B.A. from Yale College.
Angelica Ponguta
Angelica Ponguta is a globally recognized leader in early childhood development (ECD) and peacebuilding, with extensive expertise in policy analysis, program evaluation, and systems strengthening across diverse geopolitical contexts. With experience in more than 10 countries across Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East, she has played a pivotal role in developing comprehensive and integrated ECD policies, national implementation plans, and feasibility studies for large-scale early childhood programs. She has collaborated with UNICEF, the World Bank, and UNESCO, advising governments in Morocco, Macedonia, Montenegro, Colombia, and Dubai on strengthening ECD sector initiatives. Notably, she co-developed and evaluated youth-led early childhood education models in rural Pakistan, assessed the impact of ECD interventions in Palestinian refugee camps, and designed evaluation frameworks for publicly funded psychosocial and parental engagement programs in Colombia.
Ponguta serves as co-chair of the ECD subgroup within the International Network for Education in Emergencies and is a Jacobs Foundation Research Fellow, recognized for her contributions to child and youth development research. As a member of the Early Childhood Peacebuilding Consortium, she actively integrates peacebuilding, violence prevention, and macroeconomic shifts into ECD policies and programs. In Colombia, she serves as an advisor to Evidencia Potencial en Educación, a national initiative aimed at strengthening the education system through evidence-based policymaking. Ponguta also holds academic affiliations with Universidad de Los Andes, Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Humanitarian Health, Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and the Yale Institute for Global Health.
Eman Redwan (Milhem)
Eman Redwan (Milhem) is a strategic advisor and senior project manager at the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, one of the world’s leading institutions in advancing democratic governance of the security and justice sectors. Since joining the center nearly 15 years ago, she has played a pivotal role in managing programs and projects aimed at reforming the Palestinian security sector, with a focus on enhancing transparency and accountability within security institutions and developing oversight bodies in line with international standards.
Redwan brings extensive experience in providing strategic advice and planning programs, particularly those related to identifying security priorities and needs in Palestine, supporting national reconciliation, and analyzing and planning the optimal size of security forces. Her understanding of human rights principles, strengthened during her tenure with Amnesty International, has enabled her to integrate these principles into her work, ensuring a balance between security and the protection of rights and freedoms. Through her participation in various studies, research papers, and international forums, Redwan has focused on Palestinian security sector reform, its intersection with democratic governance, and peace processes. She believes that direct engagement with people on the ground is the key to deeper understanding and achieving faster, more impactful results, fostering opportunities for just and sustainable peace.
Laura Robson
Laura Robson is a scholar of international and Middle Eastern history, with a special interest in questions of refugeedom, forced migration, and statelessness. She has published extensively on the topics of refugee and minority rights, forced migration, ethnic cleansing, and the emergence of international legal regimes around resettlement and asylum.
Her most recent books are “Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work,” a wide-ranging investigation of the many 20th century schemes to deploy refugees as labor migrants across the globe, and “The Politics of Mass Violence in the Middle East,” a history of the relationship between violence and the state in the 20th century eastern Mediterranean. Robson was a recent fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., and is an inaugural member of its Refugees and Forced Displacement Initiative. She is co-founder and co-editor of StatelessHistories.org, a digital humanities project exploring the varied and multifaceted experience of statelessness in the modern era.
Robson’s current research includes one project documenting the emergence of a wide variety of forms of statelessness in the Middle East, the Balkans, and North Africa across the 20th century, and another on Palestine’s emergence as a laboratory for the development of new and highly interventionist forms of colonial and postcolonial internationalism.
Eman Salih
Dr. Eman Salih is a pharmacist and global health professional dedicated to advancing health equity and strengthening health systems at the nexus of development and humanitarian response. As a first-generation scholar from a family that deeply values education, her journey reflects a commitment to leveraging knowledge and collaboration to create impactful change in fragile and conflict-affected settings. Currently a postdoctoral associate at the Yale School of Public Health, Dr. Salih’s research focuses on health system strengthening in humanitarian crises, exploring how to build resilient healthcare systems that can adapt to the challenges of conflict and recovery. Her work on access to medications during wartime in Sudan exemplifies her ability to address critical health disparities while engaging with global stakeholders to implement sustainable solutions.
Dr. Salih has managed over $121 million in grants, including leading the World Bank-funded Sudan COVID-19 Emergency Response Project. In this role, she coordinated efforts to scale up testing and vaccination, enhance frontline healthcare capacity, and deliver life-saving services in one of the world’s most challenging contexts. As the director of bilateral and multilateral relations at Sudan’s Federal Ministry of Health, she negotiated international partnerships, secured critical funding, and implemented projects that bridged emergency response and long-term health system reforms.
At Yale, Dr. Salih serves as a professional development committee member of the Yale Postdoctoral Association and a Center for Teaching and Learning liaison, where she champions interdisciplinary collaboration and supports the professional growth of early-career scholars. Her leadership reflects her own journey as a Fulbright Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow and Scholar at Risk Fellow, experiences that have shaped her approach to mentorship and advocacy within the academic and global health communities.
Neha Sanghrajka
Neha Sanghrajka is a negotiator, mediator, and author with extensive experience delivering definitive and positive outcomes in high-stakes negotiations, including working for Kofi Annan in Kenya on the 2007 electoral crisis, dialogue, and reform process. She has extensive experience in peacebuilding and mediation with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, the United Nations and the African Union.
Most recently, in Mozambique, Sanghrajka worked directly with the UN Personal Envoy for Mozambique. She was one of two international mediators in a Track I process, resulting in a definitive ceasefire in 2017 and a historic peace accord in 2019, which led to the closure of 16 military bases and the human-centered disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of over 5,000 former combatants. She also helped negotiate a milestone decree to extend pension rights to this group in 2023.
Paul Seils
Paul Seils is director at the Peace Practice and Innovation unit at the European Institute of Peace (EIP). For nearly 30 years, he has worked in conflict and post-conflict situations around the world, working with victims, governments and international organizations, focusing on the relationship between sustainable peace and justice. His primary focus today is on rights-based dividends in peace processes, and how practical, rights-based ideas of reconciliation can support peace processes in the short and medium term.
He lived and worked in Guatemala for five years after the end of the civil war there, designing and leading an investigation into the state’s genocide of Mayan groups in the 1980s. This proved a central element in the eventual prosecution of a former military dictator. He has served, among other roles, as the head of situation analysis at the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC, the chief of the Rule of Law and Democracy Unit at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, and vice president of the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York. He has written on human rights and justice widely over the last two decades. He taught an advanced master’s course at Leiden University from 2015-2017, and was a visiting professor at the School of International Relations at St Andrew’s University, Scotland, from 2019-2022.
David Simon
David J. Simon is the Assistant Dean for Graduate Education as well as a Senior Lecturer in Global Affairs. He also serves as the Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.
Simon’s research focuses on mass atrocity prevention and post-atrocity recovery, with a particular focus on cases of mass atrocity in Africa, including those in Rwanda and Cote d’Ivoire. He is co-editor of Mass Violence and Memory in the Digital Age: Memorialization Unmoored (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2020, with Eve M. Zucker), and co-editor of the Handbook of Genocide Studies (Edward Elgar, forthcoming, with Leora Kahn). He helped launch the Mass Atrocities in the Digital Era initiative within the Genocide Studies Program (with Nathaniel Raymond). The initiative recognizes that digital technology has brought about sea changes in all aspects of mass atrocity — from the commission of it to the efforts to prevent it to the prospects of holding perpetrators responsible — and seeks to bring experts from the fields of genocide studies, international criminal law, and internet data governance in conversation with one another to devise appropriate responses.
He has served as a consultant for various United Nations offices, including Office of the Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide, the Millennium Development Project, and the UN Development Program. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and a B.A. from Princeton University.
Elizabeth Spehar
Elizabeth Spehar is the assistant secretary-general for peacebuilding support in the UN’s Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA). With more than 35 years of experience in international and political affairs, she has worked in United Nations headquarters and in the field, leading political, development, peacebuilding and conflict prevention initiatives. Most recently, since 2016, she served as the secretary-general’s special representative and head of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, also serving as deputy to the secretary-general’s special adviser on Cyprus.
Previously, Spehar was director of the Policy and Mediation Division in the former Department of Political Affairs, now DPPA, where she worked on policy and operational matters related to conflict prevention, mediation, peacebuilding and gender mainstreaming. Prior to this, she was the director for the Americas and Europe Division and director of the Europe Division in the Department of Political Affairs, engaging extensively on key political issues facing the region.
Before joining the UN, Spehar was a senior official with the Organization of American States (OAS) for more than 12 years, working to promote democracy and develop the organization’s dialogue and conflict resolution instruments. She holds a bachelor’s with honors from Queen’s University in Canada, a master’s degree in international affairs from Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, and a Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures from the University of Pau in France. She speaks English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Croatian.
Bonnie Weir
Bonnie Weir is a senior lecturer and assistant dean for undergraduate education at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. She is the founding co-director of the Program on Peace and Development at Yale University.
Weir’s research focuses on political violence and post-conflict politics with a focus on Northern Ireland. Her current projects investigate whether and how sectarianism affects political behavior and the consequences of minority rights provisions. Weir teaches courses on civil conflict, terrorism, and The Troubles and post-conflict politics in Northern Ireland.
Previously, Weir was a senior lecturer of political science and served as director of undergraduate studies for the Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale. She regularly lectures for the Yale Young Global Scholars program and is currently a visiting scholar at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security, and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast. Weir is also on the board of Peaceful Schools International and a works with a number of groups on applied and policy projects, including the Ad Hoc Committee to Protect the Good Friday Agreement and the Washington Ireland Program. She received a B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.
Melissa Wild
Melissa Wild is a trained mediator, linguist and anthropologist, focused on the intersection of peacebuilding and technological development. Having worked for more than 10 years across both the private and public sectors, throughout the Southwest Asian and North African regions, she is especially concerned with relationship-building across diverse, often contentious lines. Wild believes in ethnography for peacebuilding research, that peace is a practice, and that work in the name of social progress requires self-reflection of intent and constant interrogation of impact. Currently, Wild is pursuing a PhD in applied anthropology at Teachers College, serves as the founding director for UPEACE NY, and is special advisor to the University for Peace Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations.
Bisa Williams
Ambassador Bisa Williams (ret) is co-Founder and Managing Director of Williams Strategy Advisors, LLC (WSA), a problem-solving, business and foreign affairs advisory consulting firm. For the last 2 years, she has also led The Carter Center’s effort as Independent Observer of implementation of the Peace Agreement in Mali. Before forming WSA, Ambassador Williams was a career member of the Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State. During her 30+ years in the Foreign Service, she served tours in Guinea (Conakry), Panama, Mauritius, France, the US Mission to the UN (NY), Washington, DC, including two years at the National Security Council of The White House, and Niger. As Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Ambassador Williams led the US delegation to talks in Havana, Cuba, breaking a seven year hiatus of high level direct discussions. Her accomplishments were recognized in LeoGrande/Kornbluh book Back Channel to Cuba. She was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010 as Ambassador to Niger where she served for three years. Following her tour as Ambassador, she was named Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of African Affairs, supporting US economic policy goals in sub-Saharan Africa and bilateral policy in the West Africa region. Ambassador Williams retired from the Foreign Service in 2015. She speaks French, Spanish, and Portuguese and is the recipient of numerous Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards from the Department of State. She holds a Master of Science degree in National Security Strategy from the National War College of the National Defense University in Washington, DC and a Master of Arts degree in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude from Yale.
Moses Zombo
Moses Emmanuel Zombo is a Sierra Leonean national who studied as a linguist in West Africa’s
oldest university, Fourah Bay College, in Freetown. This period coincided with the time of the
country’s brutal civil conflict, a devastating period for the civilian population including especially
children. Starting a career in the midst of the war, he and friends founded a local section of Defence for Children International, a volunteer non-governmental organization committed to working for the rights of the nation’s most vulnerable children. Zombo went on to work with the International Rescue Committee for three years, providing care and maintenance services for internally displaced families and supporting family tracing and reunification of unaccompanied minors. He served on a team of local researchers in a Harvard-led longitudinal study of former child soldiers. Zombo also worked for eight years with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, doing refugee status determination, organizing best-interest determination for separated children and seeking durable solutions to the situation of refugees in the country. Today, he divides his professional time between nature conservation and human subjects’ research.