Peace Scholar Activities

Fall 2011

• Former Peace Scholar Séverine Autesserre (2004-2005) was named winner of the 2012 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. She was honored for her book, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding, published by Cambridge University Press.
• Peace Scholar Kevan Harris (2011-2012) will participate in a panel at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution on “Iran and International Pressure: An Assessment of Multilateral Efforts to Impede Iran’s Nuclear Program." In addition, Kevan is listed as an expert on the Crisis Guide Iran page of the Council for Foreign Relations.
• The Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation published a paper by Peace Scholar Erik Cleven (2011-2012) on "Who Needs to Talk to Whom About What and How? Transformative Dialogue in Settings of Ethnopolitical Conflict.”
• Peace Scholar Sheena Chestnut Greitens (2011-2012) published an OpEd in Newsweek Magazine entitled “What Jobs Taught Me About the Value of Failure.”

Summer 2011

• Former Peace Scholar Séverine Autesserre (2004-2005) has been awarded the 2011 Chadwick Alger Prize from the International Studies Association for her 2010 book The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding, published by Cambridge University Press.
• Former Peace Scholar Xanthe Ackerman (2009-2010) has been selected for a fellowship through Education Pioneers, working as a consultant writing a strategic plan for the DC Public Education Fund. We are proud to announce as well that Xanthe has completed her dissertation and received her Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
• Former Peace Scholar Sarah Zuckerman Daly (2008-2009) is now a Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies post-doctoral fellow at the Arnold A. Salzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, working on a book manuscript on the post-war trajectories of rebel and paramilitary organizations.

Spring 2011

• Peace Scholar Reyko Huang (2010-2011) has been awarded a Zukerman Predoctoral Fellowship from CISAC at Stanford University for 2011-2012.
• Peace Scholar Lorenzo Vidino (2009-2010) spoke at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on his book, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West, as part of the Terrorism and Homeland Security Forum.
• Peace Scholar Jonathan Pearl (2010-2011) published an OpEd, "Safeguarding Nuclear Security in the Shadow of Middle East Revolutions," in The Huffington Post.
• Peace Scholar Monika Nalepa (2004-2005), whose USIP supported dissertation was the basis for her 2010 book Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge University Press), spoke on a distinguished panel of human rights and legal scholars at Columbia University on "New Research on Transitional Justice," part of a series on Human Rights in the Post-Communist World: Strategies and Outcomes.
• Two Peace Scholar who work on war and rape, Elizabeth Jean Wood (1993-1994) and Dara Kay Cohen (2008-2009) were cited an article in The Economist, "War's Overlooked Victims."  Both also took part in a conference on "Sexual Violence in Conflict" at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway and a workshop on "Preventing Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict," orgazined by the Council on Foreign Relations' Center for Preventative Action.

Winter 2010

• Peace Scholar Anoop Sarbahi (2008-2009) and Patrick Johnston (2009-2010) gave a presentation at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University on their mutual research project, "What is a High-Value Target Really Worth? Evidence from U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan."  Both Peace Scholar alumni are Research Fellows in the International Security Program a the Belfer Center.
• Peace Scholar Melissa McAdam (2010-2011) published an article, "Taking Soft Power Seriously" in the winter issue of Comparative Strategy (Vol 29, No 5) with Matthew Kroenig (Georgetown) and Steve Weber (University of California, Berkeley)
• Peace Scholar Phillip L. Hammack (2005-2006) published three articles: "Identity as Burden or Benefit? Youth, Historical Narrative, and the Legacy of Political Conflict," Human Development 2010 53: 173-201; "Narrating Hyphenated Selves: Intergroup Contact and Configurations of Identity among Young Palestinian Citizens of Israel," Internationa Journal of Intercultural Relations 34 (2010) 368-385; and "The Cultural Psychology of Palestinian Youth: A Narrative Approach," Culture & Psychology 2010 16:507.
• Peace Scholar Jennifer Keister (2010-2011) took part in a simulation on Mindanao as part of a course on mediation held by the USIP Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding.
• Peace Scholar Jonathan Pearl (2010-2011) published an OpEd in the Huffington Post, "A Way Forward for Nuclear Arms Control."
• Peace Scholar Séverine Autesserre (2004-2005) gave the opening remarks at USIP panel in "The Trouble With the Congo," the last event in a major thre-day conference in Washington on UN Resolution 1325, "Women and War," organized by USIP with a number of other local partners.  In addition, Severine has been awarded a 2010 USIP grant to assess how an emerging international culture of peacekeeping affects the efficacy of conflict resolution programs in the context of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The project will explore how Western and non-Western approaches to peacekeeping differ, and how both interact with local contexts.  It will then assess the conditions under which peacebuilding interventions are more of less likely to succeed.

Fall 2010

• Peace Scholar Betsy Konefal (2002-2003), currently teaching at the College of William and Mary, has published a book based on her USIP-supported dissertation, For Every Indio Who Falls: A History of Maya Activism in Guatemala, 1960-1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010).
• Peace Scholar Jonathan Pearl (2010-2011) published three OpEds: "Charting a Smarter Course for a US-Jordan Nuclear Deal" on the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; "Washington Must Take a Stronger Stand on Russia-Venezuela Nuclear Deal," on the Huffington Post; and "Venezuela's Troubling Nuclear Ties," co-authored with Joel D. Hirst, posted on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations.
• Peace Scholar Angelica Duran Martinez (2010-2011), with Gayle Hazard and Viridiana Rio, co-authored the 2010 Mid-Year Report on Drug Violence in Mexico.  The report was published by the Transborder Institute at the University of San Diego as part of the Justice in Mexico project.
• Peace Scholar Lorenzo Vidino published the book, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West, in the Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare series.

Summer 2010

• Peace Scholar Alex Berg (2009-2010) took part in a panel discussion at USIP on "Security After the Quake? Addressing Violence and Rape in Haiti."
• Peace Scholar Monica Duffy Toft (1996-1997) published Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton University Press).

Spring 2010

• Peace Scholar Séverine Autesserre (2004-2005) published a book based on her USIP supported dissertation, "The Politics of the Peace Process in the Eastern Congo."  The book, The Trouble with Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding, is published by Cambridge Press as part of their Cambridge Studies in International Relations (No. 115).
• Peace Scholar Dara Cohen (2008-2009), currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnestoa, took part in a conference at USIP on How Conflict Changes Gender Roles.  Cohen spoke on "Reexamining the Role of Women in Armed Groups: Women and Wartime Rape in Sierra Leone."
• Peace Scholar Xanthe Ackerman's (2009-2010) work as the founder of Advancing Girls' Education in Africa (AGE Africa) was honored by The Christian Science Monitor at an evening panel discussion, part of the Mary Baker Eddy Library Series, In Word and Deed: Public Service and the Press, moderated by the international editor of the Monitor, David Scott.
• Peace Scholar Alex Berg (2009-2010) gave a presentation on "Field Perspectives on SSR" based on his recent research in Sierra Leone and Liberia at a conference on Security Sector Reform (SSR): Principles and Practice organized by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), a Canadian think tank, on behalf of the Canadian Ministry of Public Safety.
• Peace Scholar Benjamin Coates (2009-2010) presented a paper entitled "To Internationalize International Law: The Carnegie Endowment and The Institut de Droit International, 1910-1921" at Harvard University's annual international history conference.
• Peace Scholar Lorenzo Vidino (2009-2010) gave an interview to Volkskrant over the weekend as to what the US can learn from the Netherlands on countering radicalization.  Vidino also successfully defended his dissertation at the end of March.  Congratulations!
• Peace Scholar Kathleen Collins (1996-1997) won a major award, the Central Eurasian Studies Society Book Award for the best book published in the social science on Central Eurasia since 2006, for the book that resulted from her USIP-supported dissertation, Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge University Press, paperback edition 2009).  Collins is now an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.
• Peace Scholar David Siroky (2008-2009) is currently at Yale University as the Henry Hart Rice Fellow, a post-doctoral position.  As of fall 2010, David will take up a tenure track position as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Arizona State Unviersity.

Winter 2010

• Peace Scholar Alex Berg (2009-2010) participated in a panel at USIP on "Fighting Corruption in Security Sector Reform."
• Peace Scholar Benjamin Schonthal (2009-2010) was interviewed by Al Jazeera English on the elections in Sri Lanka.  Read here.
• Peace Scholar Lorenzo Vidino (2009-2010) was interviewed on NPR about home-grown extremism in the US and programs that are being tried elsewhere in the world to counter it.  The segment called, "Globally, Nations Grapple with Deradicalization" can be heard here.  He published a research paper, "The Homegrown Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland (ARI)," with Spanish think-tank, the Royal Elcano Institute and an article in Foreign Policy, "Toward a Radical Solution."  Vidino also has a book chapter, "Counter-Radicalization and Europe's New Security Dilemma," in Eric D. Patterson and John Gallagher's Debating the War of Ideas.  Read more about this book.
• Peace Scholar Alan Kuperman (2000-2001), a professor at the LBJ School at the University of Texas and currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, gave an internal presentation, "Darfur: Strategic Victimhood Strikes Again?"  The talk was based on an article he recently published in Genocide Studies and Prevention, Vol 4 (3), December 2009, of the same name.
• Peace Scholar Daniel Monterescu (2003-2004), currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Central European University in Budapest, as well as a Marie Curie Fellow at the European University Institute, recently published three papers, "To Buy or Not to Be: Trespassing the Gated Community," in Public Culture 21 (2), 2008; "Reconfigured the 'Mixed Town': Urban Transformation of Ethnonational Relations in Palestine and Israel," with Dan Rabinowitz, in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 40, 2008; and "The Bridled Bride of Palestine: Orientalism, Zionism and the Troubled Urban Imagination," in Identities 16 (6), 2009.
• Peace Scholar Dipali Mukhopadhyay (2008-2009) was a panelist at the 25th annual Norris and Margery Bendetson Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) symposium at Tufts University.  This year's symposium focused on "South Asia: Conflict, Culture, Complexity and Change," and Dipali spoke on the relationship between government and non-state entities, such as warlords, in Afghanistan's state-building process.
• Peace Scholar Elisabeth Wood (1993-1994) took part in a panel on "The Other Side of Gender: Masculinity Issues in Violence Conflict," at USIP.

Fall 2009

• Peace Scholar Lorenzo Vidino (2009-2010) published an OpEd in the Boston Globe's online section, "Keeping the Lid on Homegrown Terror."  He also published an article, "Europe's New Security Dilemma," in the October issue of The Washington Quarterly (Vol. 32, No. 4).  Vidino's project on counter-radicalization program has also taken him to Spain.  In October, he participated in the ISSS/ISAC conference in Monterey, and afterward he was invited by the US Embassy in Madrid to give a series of presentations based on his research in three Spanish cities under the U.S. Scholar Program.
• Peace Scholar Benjamin Schonthal (2009-2010) published an In The Field report for USIP, "A New Day for Sri Lanka" discussing the mood in Colombo on May 20th, 2009- the day after President Mahinda Rajapakse declared victory in Sri Lanka's twenty-six year old war against the separatist group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan (LTTE). 
• Peace Scholar Dipali Mukhopadhyay (2008-2009) presented a paper based on her dissertation, "Warlords as Bureaucrats: The Afghan Experience," at a panel organized by the Carnegie Endowment on International Peace.  Read the paper.
• Peace Scholar Annika Binnendijk (2007-2008) has been named a Next Generation Security Leader by the Center for a New American Society (CNAS), one of 24 annual awardees.  Annika, who finished her Ph.D. at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, is now the Special Assistant, International Security Affairs, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense.