Visiting Fellow, Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who has been serving as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism since 2017, is an expert in the fields of international and human rights law, transitional justice, national security, counter-terrorism, conflict regulation and gender-based violence in times of war. She is Regents Professor and Robina Professor of Law, Public Policy and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School, and she also holds a position as Professor of Law at the Queens University School of Law in Belfast.
Areas of expertise:
Human rights
Counterterrorism
Conflict Regulation
National Security
Gender-based Violence
Transitional Justice
Civil Wars
International Law
Contact: niaol002@umn.edu
Visiting Fellow, Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Alyssa Yamamoto is a human rights lawyer, who started working as the Robina Fellow to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism in 2021. Previously she worked as a litigation associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where she specialized in public international law and international dispute resolution. She graduated from Yale Law School and Harvard College.
Areas of expertise:
Human rights
Counterterrorism
Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victim Protection Act
Civil Wars
International Law
Contact: aty@umn.edu
Visiting Fellow, Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Michael Beevers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and Director of the Master’s Program in Managing Complex Disasters at Dickinson College (USA). Dr. Beevers’ work appears in numerous book chapters and journals, and his recent book Natural Resource Governance and Peacebuilding in the Aftermath of Conflict was published by Palgrave. Dr. Beevers’ current research explores the environmental peacebuilding dimensions of the post-carbon transition and links between climate financing, peace and conflict along the adaptation planning cycle.
Areas of expertise:
Climate, environment, conflict and peace
Peacebuilding and natural resource governance
Global environmental politics
International institutions
Politics of disaster management
Contact: beeversm@dickinson.edu
Souhail Belhadj Klaz is a researcher and visiting professor in the Master in International and Development Studies (MINT-Graduate Institute), holds a PhD in Political Science at Sciences Po Paris. He benefits from 20 years of experience in research on politics in Syria and Tunisia and is the author of the book La Syrie de Bashar al-Asad. Anatomie d'un régime autoritaire (Belin 2013). With the support of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, he was the principal investigator of the three-year project (2016-2019) Tunisia Security Provision and Local State Authority in a Time of Transition. He is currently the leading investigator of the policy research project Mapping Military and Security Actors in the Syrian Economy and is conducting in parallel research on Migration, Mobility and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Cooperation Process.
Areas of expertise include:
Local politics and political decentralisation
Security policy studies
Migration and mobility in the Mediterranean
Development cooperation in the Mediterranean
Co-Director of the Center for Development and Cooperation (NADEL) at ETH Zurich
Fritz Brugger is co-director of NADEL at ETH Zurich and member of the “Swiss Minerals Observatory” Research Incubator at the Institute of Science, Technology and Policy (ISTP) at ETH Zurich. He holds a PhD in Development Studies from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. His research and teaching focuses on the governance and development outcomes of natural resource extraction, the political economy of international tax policy, and policy coherence for development.
Areas of expertise include:
Natural resource governance
Illicit financial flows and the political economy of international tax policy
Policy coherence for development
Political economy of global governance
Contact: fritz.brugger@nadel.ethz.ch
Postdoctoral fellow at the Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Elena Butti is an anthropologist, humanitarian practitioner and participatory film-maker interested in the lives of adolescents and young people at the urban margins. She holds a PhD and a Post-Doc from the University of Oxford (CSLS and DPIR, respectively). Her current book project We Are the Nobodies: Youth, violence and drug-dealing in and around Medellin is an ethnographic exploration of adolescents’ first hesitant steps into drug-related crime in contemporary Colombia. She has collaborated with several international organizations on matters related to the Youth, Peace and Security agenda. More recently, she worked as Global Youth Advisor for the humanitarian NGO War Child. She is also the author of several participatory films co-directed with young people in Colombia.
Areas of expertise include:
Adolescents and youth involved in crime and violence
Gangs, militias, and vigilante groups
Youth activism and urban peacebuilding
Conflict and violence in Colombia and Latin America
Visual and participatory research methods
Ethnographic research in high-risk settings
Contact: elena.butti@graduateinstitute.ch
Website: www.elenabutti.com
Assistant Professor, School of International Service (SIS), American University, Washington DC
Dr. Susanna Campbell is an Assistant Professor at the American University in Washington, D.C. She was the Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator, respectively, for two large research projects: Aiding Peace? Donor Behavior in Conflict-Affected Countries funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) and Bad Behavior? Explaining Performance in International Peacebuilding Organizations funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), both of which were based on her dissertation research. In late 2013, she was the Principal Investigator for a multi-method evaluation of the UN Peacebuilding Fund in Burundi.
Areas of expertise include:
Africa
Peacebuilding, Statebuilding and Conflict prevention
International organizations and Organizational and Institutional Theory
International Relations
Contact: susanna.campbell@american.edu
Research Advisor on the Sociology of Non-State Armed Groups at the International Committee of the Red Cross, Switzerland
Areas of expertise include:
Civil wars and insurgencies
Comparative politics
Contentious politics and political violence
Institutional and organisational studies
Islamist and jihadi movements
Middle East politics
Salafism
Social movement studies
Social network analysis.
Contact: jerome.drevon@graduateinstitute.ch
Professor and Head of the Africa Centre for Dispute Settlement, University of Stellenbosch Business School
Brian Ganson holds a Juris Doctorate (with honors) from Harvard Law School, a Master of Arts in Law & Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Tufts University, and a Bachelor of Arts in European Studies (with high distinction) from the University of Michigan. Mr. Ganson has broad experience developing and delivering executive education programmes for diplomats, business executives, and civil society leaders through Harvard Law School and other leading institutions. In his consulting work he advises organizations operating in particularly challenging environments.
Areas of expertise include:
Business engagement in fragile environments
Organizational capabilities for effective engagement in post-conflict and other complex environments
The impact of donor policy, priorities, and recipient relations on the effectiveness of local efforts at the intersection of peacebuilding and development
Rights compatible, interest-based approaches to the settlement of company/community conflicts
Contact: brian@ganson.org
Research Associate, Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Farrah Hawana is an independent researcher and freelance consultant who finished her Ph.D. in Political Science/International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in 2016. In 2006, she completed an M.A. degree in International Conflict Analysis at the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies in Belgium. Her undergraduate degrees in History and International Relations were awarded by the College of William and Mary in 2004. Farrah has accumulated extensive professional experience over more than fifteen years of work with various non-governmental organizations, international institutions, and academic research/policy centers, such as the International Labour Organization and the Small Arms Survey. Most recently, she was a Lecturer in International Politics & Security at Aberystwyth University, where she taught courses and supervised dissertations at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She is broadly interested in exploring questions of power, legitimacy, security, and justice, and in understanding complex political change, with specific focus on the Middle East and North Africa.
Areas of expertise:
International Relations and International Security
Political violence, armed groups, and countering violent extremism
Peacebuilding and state-building
Gender and conflict; women, peace, and security
Militarization and the arms trade, security sector reform, civil-military relations
Comparative authoritarianism, autocratization, and political transitions; Arab state-society relations
Contact: farrah.hawana@graduateinstitute.ch
Research Associate, Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding, Senior Advisor and lead on the Future of Arms Control Project
Dr. Ibrahim is a Research Associate, Senior Advisor and lead to the Future of Arms Control Project at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP), at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Abdulla is researching international conflicts with over twelve years of expertise in multilateral dialogues and research processes. He is also a Nonresident Fellow with the Stimson Center, and an adjunct fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC. Abdulla’s research interests at the CCDP span topics ranging from arms control to European security, armed groups and armed forces consolidation, U.S. and Russian foreign policies and relations, to the current and future challenges to international order. Abdulla holds a PhD in international relations and political science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva (IHEID); and an MA from the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame.
Areas of expertise include:
Armed groups and armed forces consolidation
US-Russia arms control and European security
East Mediterranean and Middle East security dynamics
Multilateral negotiations and facilitation
Conflict analysis and dialogue process design
Languages spoken: English, Arabic, French
Contact: abdulla.ibrahim@graduateinstitute.ch
Director of Studies at the Changing Character of War Programme (Pembroke College) and Research Associate at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, UK
Dr Annette Idler is the Director of Studies at the Changing Character of War Programme, Pembroke College, and Research Associate at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. She holds a doctorate from the Department of International Development and St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford and a MA in International Relations from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Dr Idler’s work focuses on the interface of conflict, security, transnational organized crime and peacebuilding, and the role that violent non-state actors play in these dynamics.
Areas of expertise include:
Interactions and trends among violent non-state actors
Nexus of conflict, security and transnational organised crime
Illicit drug trade and drug policy
Conflict prevention and peacebuilding
Borderlands
Colombia's armed conflict and citizen security in Latin America
Contact: annette.idler@politics.ox.ac.uk
Professor at Aalborg University and Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute Against Torture (DIGNITY), Copenhagen, Denmark
Steffen Jensen is a Professor at Aalborg University, Copenhagen Campus in the Department of Culture and Global Studies as well as a Senior Researcher at DIGNITY-The Danish Institute Against Torture. He holds a degree in International Development Studies and is specialized in the interdisciplinary study of rural and urban development issues, including those relating to conflict and state and non-state violence, justice, local politics, human rights and issues of inequality. Of particular interest are issues around torture and ill-treatment as well as forms of displacement and stuckness.
Areas of expertise include:
Conflict and violence
Displacement and refugees
Documentation and knowledge production in human rights
Urban and rural politics
Gangs, militias, vigilante groups and police
Corruption and violence as exchange relations
Development and human rights
South Africa, the Philippines, Algeria and Denmark
Contact: sje@dignityinstitute.dk
Head of Sub-Office in Nigeria, Head of Stabilisation, UNDP
Moncef Kartas holds a PhD degree in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and a Master's degree in political science, philosophy and international law from the University of Munich. Moncef specialises in security sector governance, border security, armed violence reduction and conflict transformation in fragile contexts particularly in North Africa, the Sahel, East Africa and South Asia.
Areas of expertise include:
The role of armed and security forces in post-colonial state formation and politics
The link between security and development (peacebuilding and conflict transformation; urbanisation and violence; informal economy, trafficking and borders)
The politics and public management challenges of security sector reform and community engagement
Political violence, armed groups and violent extremism
North Africa and the Sahara-Sahel, Rwanda, Madagascar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
Contact: moncef.kartas@graduateinstitute.ch
SNSF Postdoctoral Researcher / Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute, Florence
Vassily A. Klimentov is a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Postdoctoral researcher/ Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre at the European University Institute in Florence. His research is focusing on the insurgencies in the North Caucasus. He is also a Research Associate at the Pierre du Bois Foundation in Geneva. He has received his PhD in International History from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. He also holds a MA in General History from the University of Geneva and a MA in Asian Studies from the Graduate Institute and the University of Geneva. Vassily A. Klimentov has previously worked for several years with humanitarian NGOs as an analyst and a needs and security assessment coordinator. He has notably been posted for two years in the Middle East.
Areas of Expertise include:
Politics in the Post-Soviet Space
Soviet & Russian Foreign Policy
Soviet War in Afghanistan
Islamist Terrorism
Humanitarian Assessment & Analysis
Contact: vassily.klimentov(at)graduateinstitute.ch
Research Associate, Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Masayo worked with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) from August 1995 until May 2022. She covered geographical desks (Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific) as well as emergency preparedness, capacity development, and policy, leading up to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the SDGs in 2015. Before joining OCHA in Geneva, she worked with the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) in Japan, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Japan and in Paraguay, and with the UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) as electoral officer monitoring the first presidential election following the peace accord.
In 2010-2011 Masayo spent her UN Sabbatical Programme period at the CCDP, which led to Linking Humanitarian Action and Peacebuilding (CCDP Working Paper No. 7). She then completed a second Master’s degree in International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute in 2014. Previously she received an MA in Latin American Studies from Sandford University in the 1990s. In 2014, she started a capacity development seminar for OCHA staff with the UN System Staff College (UNSSC) entitled “Conflict Analysis for linking Humanitarian Action and Peacebuilding (CAHAPB).” This was the precursor to the Action Learning for Conflict Analysis (ALCA) initiative. She is currently contributing to the second phase of the Action Learning for Conflict Analysis (ALCA) project on “Promoting System-Wide Analytical Capabilities across the Triple Nexus.”
Areas of expertise:
Humanitarian-development-peace nexus
Humanitarian civil-military coordination
Conflict analysis as a tool to link humanitarian action and peace-and-security concerns
Non-state armed groups and private military and security companies (PMSCs)
Emergency preparedness and disaster risk reduction
SDG 16
Contact: masayo.kondo@graduateinstitute.ch
Director of The Policy Lab, Oslo (Norway) and Boston (US).
Dr. Derek B. Miller is Director of The Policy Lab® and a novelist. He holds the additional positions of Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, and Design Fellow at the Center for Public Policy and Service Design at the Somali Public Agenda, Mogadishu. Miller earned his Ph.D summa cum laude at The Graduate Institute in Geneva, with post-graduate work at Linacre College, Oxford; MA in national security studies from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown; and BA from Sarah Lawrence College. He was senior researcher and project manager at UNIDIR for almost a decade. His work focuses mainly on decision making and moving knowledge to action in political and administrative systems. Miller is also the critically-acclaimed and bestselling author of Norwegian by Night, The Girl in Green, American by Day, Radio Life, the Audible Original novel Quiet Time, and the forthcoming How to Find Your Way in the Dark.
Areas of expertise include:
Design and innovation for public policy
Evidence-based project and programme design
Moving knowledge to action in administrative systems
Post-conflict stability
Public diplomacy and media
International security and war studies
Contact: derek.miller@graduateinstitute.ch
Research Director of the Igarapé Institute and Professor at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Dr. Robert Muggah is the Research Director of the Igarapé Institute, a Principal of the SecDev Group, and a professor at the Instituto de Relações Internacionais, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. From Brazil he directs several projects on international cooperation, peace-support operations, transnational organized crime, citizen security and violence prevention, and humanitarian action in non-war settings across Latin America and the Caribbean. He currently oversees the humanitarian action in situations other than war (HASOW) project, the States of Fragility project, and the Urban Resilience project. He also advises the High Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda. Dr. Muggah received his DPhil at Oxford University and his MPhil at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex.
Areas of expertise include:
Security promotion and armed violence reduction in complex environments
Risks and responses to population displacement and resettlement
State-building, stabilization and fragility and the political economy of securitization
Urbanisation and forms of institutional resilience
Contact: robert.muggah@graduateinstitute.ch
Visiting Professor, MINT Programme
Ambassador (ret.)
Associate Fellow, GCSP
Fred Tanner is currently a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute and an Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) in Geneva. He previously served as Senior Adviser to the Secretary General of the OSCE, and subsequently, at the Swiss MFA in Crisis Management. For seven years, he was the Director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP). He recently conducted research on peace missions as Practitioner-in-Residence at the Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. While at the OSCE, he was also the project leader of a Lessons Learned Project on the performance of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine. Earlier he was a member of the UN Secretary-General Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters (ABDM) and serves now on the Boards of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Regional Office and the International Institute for Peace, Vienna.
Languages spoken:
English, French, German
Areas of expertise include:
Peacebuilding, peacekeeping, peacemaking
International organisations, UN, OSCE, OSCE Network
Institutional approach to conflict prevention, conflict management and mediation support
European and global security
Armed and protracted conflicts
Arms control and disarmament, conventional arms control, CSBMs, risk reduction
Contact: fred.tanner@graduateinstitute.ch
Academic Coordinator for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region, Executive Master in Development Policies & Practices (DPP)
Researcher and Program Lead at the Small Arms Survey
Program Director of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, a member of the Palestinian Strategic Thinking Group
Alaa Tartir is a research associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP). Amongst other positions, Tartir was a post-doctoral fellow at The Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), a visiting scholar and lecturer at Utrecht University, and a researcher in international development studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he earned his PhD. Tartir is the co-editor of Palestine and Rule of Power: Local Dissent vs. International Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), and the author of Policing Palestine: Securitising Peace and Criminalising Resistance in the West Bank (Pluto Press, 2019).
Areas of expertise include:
Political Economy of development and international aid
State-building and governance in conflict-affected areas
Security Sector Reform and securitized development
Public Policy Analysis
Political Economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Palestinian politics, and Arab-Israeli conflict
Contact: alaa.tartir@graduateinstitute.ch and full profile.
Research Associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Djacoba Liva Tehindrazanarivelo holds a PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, a Certificate of the Centre for Studies and Research of the Hague Academy of International Law, and a Maîtrise in Public Law and Political Science from the University of Antananarivo, Madagascar. For the past 16 years he has been teaching Public International Law, international organizations, UN peace mechanism, human rights, conflict resolution, the Responsibility to protect, and the law and practices of law in Africa – at the Graduate Institute, Boston University Study Abroad Geneva, the Institute for Human Rights (Catholic University of Lyon) and at University of Geneva. As a practitioner, he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Madagascar (January 2020 – August 2021); he is also a member of the France-Madagascar Mixed Claims Commission relating to the dispute over islands off the West coast of Madagascar (since November 2019), and has conducted consultancies with various international organizations.
M. Tehindrazanarivelo is author of two books on the unintended effects of United Nations sanctions and on racism against migrants in Europe. He has moreover co-edited four other books, and published articles on a variety of topics in International Law, African Union Law, peace and security, human rights, and the fight against impunity.
Areas of expertise include:
United Nations law, sanctions, and peace mechanisms
African Union law, and the African peace and security architecture
Democratic governance and unconstitutional changes of government
Regional organizations in Southern and Eastern Africa, and the Indian Ocean
Critical analyses of law and practices of law in Africa
Uncomplete decolonization processes
Diplomatic law and practice
Human rights training and migrants’ rights
Contact: Coming soon
Research Associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Khalid Tinasti is a political scientist. He also serves as a Visiting Fellow at the International Center on Drug Policy Studies at Shanghai University, and taught international drug policy as a Visiting Lecturer at the Geneva Graduate Institute (2021-2022) where he supervises Master students theses on drug control policies. He is the Director of External Relations at the Climate Overshoot Commission, and the former Director of the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Before joining the Global Commission’s Secretariat in 2013 as a Policy Analyst, he worked as an independent consultant for UNAIDS, WHO, the Graduate Institute and others. Prior to that, Khalid worked as a Press and Communications Officer in the office of the Minister of Urban Cohesion (ministre de la Ville) in France, and as an Executive Officer in Gabon. Khalid holds a PhD in political science from the Institut Catholique de Paris, and held research fellowships at the Global Health Programme at the Geneva Graduate Institute (2015-16), at the Global Studies Institute at the University of Geneva (2018-2021) and an honorary fellowship at Swansea University (2016-20).
Areas of expertise include:
Drug policy & International drug control regime governance
Public policy analysis
Competitive-authoritarian political regimes
Morocco & West Africa
Research Associate, Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Robert joined the CCDP after a 35-year career working for international organisations in political, humanitarian, development and post-conflict recovery areas in some 13 different countries, principally in the Middle East, Central, and South Asia. He served for the United Nations as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General in Lebanon (2011-2014) and Afghanistan (2009-2011) at the level of Assistant Secretary General, as well as UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Bangladesh (2015-17), Djibouti (2014), and Georgia (2006-2009). Since retiring from the UN at the end of 2017, he has taught as a Practitioner at the Graduate Institute and at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and presented papers on Conflict Prevention at AUB, Lebanon, and the University of Tianjin, China. He holds an MA in International Affairs from the Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa. He is currently contributing to the second phase of the Action Learning for Conflict Analysis (ALCA) project on “Promoting System-Wide Analytical Capabilities across the Triple Nexus.”
Areas of expertise include:
New approaches to Peacebuilding
Role of Land Ownership in conflict settlement
Digital literacy in the Prevention of Violent Extremism
Mediation
Role of the UN in World Politics, Conflict Prevention & Peacekeeping
Contact: robert.watkins@graduateinstitute.ch