Network Coordinators

Stephen Baranyi, School of International Development and Global Studies

Stephen Baranyi is Associate Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies. He currently works at the nexus of development and security, on issues like the challenges of security system reform, development cooperation and gender equality in fragile states, especially in the Americas. Prior to joining the University in 2008, he worked as a human rights advocate in the European Union, a policy adviser to government agencies in Canada, a grant manager at the International Development Research Centre and a principal researcher at the North-South Institute. He has lived in Central America, the Caribbean and Europe, and has conducted field missions to numerous countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia. He has also published widely on issues such as peacebuilding, land policies and fragile states – as well as on Canadian policy and the roles of international organisations in this area.

 


Stephen Brown, School of Political Studies

Stephen Brown is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Ottawa. His research focuses mainly on the intersection of the policies and practices of rich countries and other international actors with politics in poor countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. He has published on democratization, political violence, peacebuilding and transitional justice/rule of law in Angola, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Rwanda. In recent years, he has been Visiting Researcher, German Development Institute, Bonn, Germany (2009) and Visiting Professor, Centre de recherche et d’étude sur les pays d’Afrique orientale, Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, Pau, France (2010). He is currently working on two projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The first project examines Canadian aid policy in comparative perspective, for which he is editing a book on CIDA and Canadian development assistance and co-editing a volume on the securitization of foreign aid, jointly with Jörn Grävingholt of the German Development Institute. His second project analyzes accountability mechanisms for the 2007-08 post-election violence in Kenya, being conducted jointly with Chandra Lekha Sriram of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

 


Christoph Zuercher, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs

Christoph Zuercher is Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. He received my PhD. from the University of Bern, Switzerland. Previous teaching and research appointments include the University of Konstanz, Germany, the institut d’études politiques d’Aix-en-Provence, Stanford University, and Freie University Berlin. His research and teaching interests include conflict research, methods of conflict research, state-building and intervention, international governance and development. His regional focus is on the Former Soviet Union especially on Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia including Afghanistan. He is the editor of “Potentials of Disorder. Explaining Violence in the Caucasus and in the Former Yugoslavia” (Manchester UP, 2003) and the author of “The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict and Nationhood in the Post-Soviet Era (New York: University Press, 2007.

 

Members

Rita Abrahamsen, School of International Development and Global Studies

Rita Abrahamsen is Associate Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies and in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Her research interests are in African politics, security and development, security privatization and postcolonial theory. She is the author (with M.C. Williams) of Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and the Good Governance Agenda in Africa (Zed Books, 2000). Her articles have appeared in leading journals including African Affairs, Alternatives, International Political Sociology, Journal of Modern African Studies, Political Studies, Third World Quarterly and Review of African Political Economy. She is joint-editor of African Affairs, the highest ranked journal in African studies. Prior to joining the University of Ottawa, she was in the Department of International Politics at the University of Aberystwyth, and she has been visiting fellow at the University of Cape Town, the European University Institute in Florence, the University of Queensland in Brisbane, and the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) in Oslo.

 


Nipa Banerjee, School of International Development and Global Studies

Nipa Banerjee is Visitng Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies. She earned Doctorate and Master’s degrees, specializing in development studies, from Toronto, Carleton and McMaster Universities. She served as a practitioner and policy analyst in international development and foreign aid for over 30 years. She worked with CUSO and IDRC and 33 years in CIDA. She represented CIDA in Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and in Afghanistan (2003-2006) heading Canada’s aid program in the four latter countries. She joined the University of Ottawa in July of 2007, teaching international development Her primary objective as a teacher is to transfer development knowledge, expertise and skills to young Canadians and prepare them as analytic and critical thinkers and future practitioners in international development. She strives to promote debates and dialogue on development and aid, aiming to influence public opinion and public policies. She has to her credit several published policy briefs and a Chapter on Canada’s Role in Afghanistan in a recently published book. Her research interests include reconstruction, development and aid effectiveness, coordination, management and related policies in fragile states, in general and a special focus on Afghanistan, where she travels frequently. Her other activities comprise capacity building in partner developing countries in planning and managing for results and monitoring & evaluation. She also conducts evaluation of effectiveness of aid in partner countries.

 


Pierre Beaudet, School of International Development and Global Studies

Pierre Beaudet is Replacement Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies, bringing to the program 25 years of experience in international development as a researcher and manager of various programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and as a consultant for CIDA, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and several Canadian and Internationa NGOs. In these contexts, I have produced extensive analyses on numerous development issues and on the impacts of globalization in many Third World countries, such as Brazil, India, Palestine, South Africa and Niger. I have also had the opportunity to work with hundreds of students interested in countributing to international development within the different internships I have directed and courses I have taught in a number of Institutions throughout the world.

 


Marie-Ève Desrosiers, School of International Development and Global Studies

Marie-Eve Desrosiers is Assistant Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies. Her research focuses on the security of developing countries. She studies political crises and civil conflicts, the role of identity in contentious politics, state-society relations, as well as state fragility. Her most recent studies have examined episodes of political violence in Rwanda during the twentieth century. She also conducts research on Canadian foreign and international development policy. She was a founder of the francophone branch of the Canadian Consortium on Human Security and she regularly takes part in civil society activities pertaining to human security.

 


Cédric Jourde, School of Political Studies

Cédric Jourde is an Associate Professor at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. His research interests are African politics, particularly the diverse forms and transformative nature of Islamic politics in the Sahel and Western African; the transformation process of political regimes (restored autocracies; democracy); and the evolution of identity groups (ethnicity; religion) in post-Colonial African states.

 


Roland Paris, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs

Roland Paris is University Research Chair in International Security and Governance and Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA). He is also Director of the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) at the University of Ottawa. He has expertise in the fields of international security, international governance and foreign policy. His writings have appeared in leading academic journals including International Security and International Studies Quarterly. His book At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict won three prizes including the 2007 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He is currently co-director of the Research Partnership on Postwar Statebuilding, and co-editor of the Routledge book series on Security and Governance. Prior to joining the University of Ottawa in 2006, he served as a foreign policy advisor in the Department of Foreign Affairs and later in the Privy Council Office, assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, visiting researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., and director of research at The Conference Board of Canada. He has received three awards for his teaching and two for public service.

 


David Petrasek, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs

David Petrasek is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA). Formerly Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, he has worked extensively on human rights, humanitarian and conflict resolution issues, including for Amnesty International (1990-96), for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-98), for the International Council on Human Rights Policy (1998-02), and as Director of Policy at the HD Centre (2003-07). He has taught international human rights and/or humanitarian law courses at the Osgoode Hall Law School, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute at Lund University, Sweden, and at Oxford University. David has also worked as a consultant or adviser to several NGOs and UN agencies.

 


Michael Williams, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs

Michael C. Williams is Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and Faculty Research Chair in International Politics. His research interests are in International Relations theory, security studies, and political thought. His most recent book (with Rita Abrahamsen) is Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011). His previous publications include The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Culture and Security: Symbolic Power and the Politics of International Security (Routledge, 2007) and the editor of several books, including most recently, Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans J. Morgenthau in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2007). His articles have appeared in journals including the European Journal of International Relations, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Millennium, and the Review of International Studies. Prior to joining the University of Ottawa, he was Professor of International Politics in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth, and has been a visiting fellow at the Universities of Cape Town, Copenhagen, and the European University Institute in Florence.

 


Benjamin ZylaBenjamin Zyla, School of International Development and Global Studies

Benjamin Zyla is an Assistant Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. Before coming to the uOttawa, he held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship, and was a fellow at the Europe Center at Stanford University, the Centre for International Relations at Queen’s University and the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa. For the fall semester 2012 he was visiting professor at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and the TRIANGLE research unit. He is interested in questions of global governance, international peace-operations, strategic culture, and European foreign and security policy in Africa. Specifically, he is currently involved in four broad research projects, and interested in supervising student in those (broad) areas: (1) The EU and US’s role in Africa (2) The whole of government approach in Afghanistan: (3) The practice of regional security organizations (i.e. EU, African Union) (4) The role(s) of middle powers in international development and security