Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) Podcasts

Sara Pantuliano is a political scientist with extensive experience in conflict and post-conflict contexts. Prior to joining the Overseas Development Institute in 2006, she led UNDP Sudan’s Peace Building Unit, managed a high-profile post-conflict response in the Nuba Mountains and was a resource person and an observer at the IGAD Sudan peace process. She has written extensively on Sudan and is a regular media commentator on Sudan and humanitarian issues. Her current work focuses on underexplored dimensions of displacement, particularly the role of land in return and reintegration processes and displacement in urban contexts. She is the Managing Editor of Disasters.

From 1995 to 2010 Roy Culpeper was President and Chief Executive Officer of The North-South Institute, Ottawa. Prior to being appointed President he served as the Institute’s Vice-President, Research, and Program Director, International finance and Debt. Earlier in his career he was an official at the World Bank in Washington, the federal departments of Finance and External Affairs in Ottawa, and the Planning Secretariat of the Government of Manitoba in Winnipeg. From January to May 2011 he was the Fulbright Canada Visiting Research Chair at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He is currently a Distinguished Research Fellow of The North-South Institute, Senior Fellow of the University of Ottawa’s School of International Development and Global Studies, and Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University.

One year after the beginning of what was then called the Arab Spring, this panel discussion aims at taking stock of political developments in key Middle Eastern and North African countries. Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation and a frequent commentator on Middle Eastern politics for The New Republic, Project Syndicate, Foreign Policy, CNN’s Global Public Square, and other outlets. Peter Jones is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. Omar Ashour is Lecturer on the politics of the modern Arab world and Director of the M.A. Program in Middle East Studies at the University of Exeter. He is also currently a visiting scholar at the Brookings Doha Centre. He specializes in Islamist movements and ideologies, democratization, ethnic/civil conflict, and terrorism studies, and is the author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements (2009).

Frank Harvey is Professor of International Relations at Dalhousie University. He has published numerous articles in various outlets and is the author of The Homeland Security Dilemma: Fear, Failure and the Future of American Insecurity (Routledge, 2008), Smoke and Mirrors: Globalized Terrorism and the Illusion of Multilateral Security (University of Toronto Press, 2004) and Using Force to Prevent Ethnic Violence: An Evaluation of Theory and Evidence (with David Carment, Praeger, 2001), as well as of half a dozen other books. His current research interests include globalized terrorism, unilateral vs. multilateral security, proliferation, U.S. and Canadian foreign, security and defence policy, NATO military strategy and third-party intervention into ethnic disputes, peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention.

Farah Pandith was appointed Special Representative to Muslim Communities in June 2009. Her office is responsible for executing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s vision for engagement with Muslims around the world on a people-to-people and organizational level. She reports directly to the Secretary of State. Previously, she was Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. In this role she was focused on Muslim communities in Europe where she was responsible for policy oversight for integration, democracy, and Islam in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. She also worked on issues relating to countering violent Islamic extremism. Ms. Pandith will speak about 2011 Hours Against Hate, a campaign she helped to launch in early 2011 focused on getting young people all over the world to volunteer their time to build stronger communities that value pluralism and diversity and reject hate and bigotry.

Mr. Borten Moe is Minister of Petroleum and Energy and vice chair of the Centre Party. In 1995 he became member of the Trondheim city council, and served here for three consecutive periods. In 2001 he became a member of the Norwegian Parliament, representing Sør-Trøndelag County. He has been a member of the Standing Committee on Energy and the Environment from 2005-2007. He was chair of the Standing Committee on Business and Industry from 2007-2009 and First Vice Chair in the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs from 2009-2011. He was also vice chair of the parliamentary group steering committee.

Dr. Walter Posch is Researcher at the German Institute for Foreign and Security Policy (SWP), Middle East and Africa division. He was previously Senior Research Fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) in Paris, and Researcher at the National Defense Academy in Vienna. His research focuses on the development of Iran’s “neo-fundamentalist” political current. His greater areas of expertise are foreign, security and defense policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Iranian domestic policy; political system and ideology of the Islamic Republic; and European-Iranian relations.

Katia Papagianni heads the Mediation Support Programme at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), a Geneva-based conflict mediation organization. Her work focuses on the facilitation of political dialogue in pre- and post-peace agreement contexts as well as in countries undergoing political transitions. Before joining the HD Centre, she worked for Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Development Programme. Her experience also includes work for the National Democratic Institute in Russia, the OSCE in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the UN in Iraq. She holds a doctorate in political science from Columbia University, New York and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Princeton University. Her research has focused on political transitions following peace agreements, power-sharing in mediation efforts and the linkages between mediation and peacebuilding. She has taught on peace- and state-building at Columbia University and the Geneva Graduate Institute for International Studies. She has also published on peacebuilding and mediation in various journals and edited volumes.

Irene Khan is an international expert on human rights and humanitarian issues. From 2001 to 2009 she was Secretary General of Amnesty International. Prior to joining Amnesty International, Irene worked for the UN High Commissioner High Commissioner for Refugees for 21 years. She sits on the board of several human rights and development organizations. A citizen of Bangladesh, she studied law at the University of Manchester and Harvard Law School. She is the recipient of several honorary degrees and awards.

John Ruggie is the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and an Affiliated Professor in International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. From 1997 to 2001 he served as U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning. From 2005 to 2011, he was the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Business and Human Rights. Following an extensive consultation process he presented to the UN Human Rights Council a set of “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights“, which were unanimously endorsed by the Council in June 2011. His take will address the challenges of ensuring that the obligations emerging from these principles are acted upon – both by governments and by the private sector.

Natalie Rea is the founder and executive director of the International Legal Foundation (ILF), an international NGO that assists post-conflict and transitional countries in establishing public defender systems that provide effective, quality criminal defense services to the poor. She also founded the ILF’s predecessor, Legal Aid Rwanda. Rea also works for the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the Legal Aid Society of New York, where she represents indigent defendants at the appellate level.

Ronald R. Krebs is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the origins and consequences of international conflict and military service and on linguistic practices and politics. Prof. Krebs is the author of Fighting for Rights: Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship (Cornell University Press, 2006) and is co-editor of In War's Wake: International Conflict and the Fate of Liberal Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He has also published articles on a range of subjects in leading IR journals, and his commentaries have appeared in, among others, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, ForeignPolicy.com, and Slate.

(In French) Pierre Razoux directs the "North Africa and Middle East" research program at NATO Defense College in Rome, and was in charge of missions for Srategic Affairs Delegation of the French Ministry of Defense. He also served three years in London within the British Ministry of Defence as part of an exchange between France and the United Kingdom. He has gained real experience in the field of international relations and defense issues and has completed numerous missions abroad, notably in North Africa, the Middle East and the Caucasus. Recognized expert in the Middle East, he has published 7 books and over 90 reference articles (last published titles: Histoire de la Géorgie – La clé du Caucase, Perrin, 2009 and Tsahal, nouvelle histoire de l'armée israélienne, Perrin, Collection "Tempus", 2008), which gives him the opportunity to be regularly interviewed by the media (newspapers, radios, televisions). He is currently writing a book on the Iran-Iraq war and is preparing to support his accreditation to supervise research for the University of Paris IV Sorbonne. He is a researcher associated with many international think tanks and regularly gives lectures, mainly in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

Before joining Griffith University in January 2010, Andrew O'Neil was Associate Professor and Director of the Flinders International Asia Pacific Institute at Flinders University. Prior to taking up an academic position in 2000, Andrew worked as a strategic analyst with Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation as part of its North Asia and Global Issues branch. Between 2005 and 2007 he served on the Australian Foreign Minister's National Consultative Committee for International Security Issues, and in 2007 he was a Visiting Professor at Hiroshima University. In 2009 Andrew was appointed editor-in-chief of the Australian Journal of International Affairs and is an ex officio member of the National Executive of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He is presently Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council Project examining Australia's nuclear choices in the context of a rapidly evolving global nuclear marketplace, continuing weapons proliferation worldwide, and pressures resulting from climate change. He is also one of ten Chief Investigators attached to the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. James Manicom completed his PhD at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia in October 2009. His dissertation examined maritime boundary disputes between China and Japan and was funded by the Endeavour International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. He is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada. His research interests include Asian international relations and strategic studies, energy security, nationalism and territorial disputes; the latter three in particular as they relate to the Canadian Arctic. His published works have appeared in Pacific Affairs, The Pacific Review, and The Australian Journal of International Affairs. He sits on the executive of the Toronto Branch of the Canadian International Council.

(In French) Eric Pineault is Professor of sociology at the University of Quebec in Montreal and Director of research at the Canada Research Chair on Globalization, Citizenship and Democracy. He is also a member of the Collectif d'Analyse de la Financiarisation du Capitalisme Avancé (CAFCA).