Board of Directors

Research and Publications Chair: Brooke Moreland, Ph.D.  (22-24)

Conference Chair (2023-2024); Co-Liaison to Activists: Dave Reilly, Ph.D. (22-24)

Membership Chair: Dean Johnson, Ph.D. (22-24)

Awards Chair: Deeb Kitchen, Ph.D.  (22-24)

Women, Gender, and Diversity Chair: Susan Cushman, Ph.D. (22-24)

Fundraising Chair: Jeremy Rinker, Ph.D. (22-24)

Program and Organziational Partnerships Chair: Kristin Famula, MA (22-24)

Education, Pedagogy, and Praxis Chair: Joy Meeker, Ph.D. (22-24)

Co-Liaison to Activists: Michael Chadukiewicz, Ph.D. (22-24)

Mini-Grant Program Chair: Michelle Harris (24-25)

Michelle Harris is a Research Fellow at the University of Portland. She is currently a second-year doctoral student working toward her Education Doctorate. She is also the US Coordinator for the Schools of Mass Destruction through ICAN. Her areas of focus are restorative practices in education and best practices in education. She has also served as the Mini-Grant Program Co-Coordinator for PJSA since 2021. In her off time, Michelle enjoys spending time with her family, hiking, and many crafting projects.

Former Board Members

Dr. Amanda Singer is a social justice educator with over 30 years of experience working with diverse communities to heal trauma and transform conflict. Dr. Byron is especially interested in transforming bias and hatred, forging creative strategies for individual and collective responses. Dr. Byron has been a core faculty member of the Program in Conflict Resolution at Portland State University since 1998/1999, where her research interests center around postsecondary peace pedagogy. She has served a Fulbright Scholar in Vietnam and has received multiple awards for her excellence in teaching. Amanda earned her BA in Business Administration at Lewis and Clark College, her MA in Intercultural Management at World Learning/School for International Training, and her EdD in Educational Leadership at Portland State University (Storytelling as Loving Praxis in Critical Peace Education: A Grounded Theory Study of Facilitating Action Toward Social Justice in Postsecondary Education). Dr. Byron’s current research focuses on unsettling the role of identity in conflict and social justice work, understanding enmification and hatred as root causes of violence, developing peacebuilding strategies to effectively address religious conflict, and engaging participant hope and participant discomfort in transforming our collective legacy of injustice.

Dr. Michelle Collins-Sibley joined the faculty at the University of Mount Union – then Mount Union College — in 1994; professor of English, she directs the Africana Studies Program in the Department of Interdisciplinary & Liberal Studies. For nearly a decade she served as one of the lead faculty of the annual NEH Summer Seminar, ROOTS: African Dimensions of the History and Culture of the Americas through the Atlantic Slave Trade at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her teaching and research interests focus on Africana literatures, specifically women writers of the African diaspora, literary theory – womanist/feminist, post-colonial – contemplative and peace pedagogies, and comparative literature; recent publications include, “’Becoming the Bear’: A Meditation on Racial Battle Fatigue, Resistance & Grace in Academia,” (Racial Battle Fatigue: Insights from the Front Lines of Social Justice Advocacy. Ed. Jennifer Martin. Praeger 2015), “If These are Our Values, then What is Our Practice: #BlackLivesMatter and an American Apocalypse,” (Peace and Justice Studies: Critical Pedagogy, eds. Margaret Groarke & Emily Welty. Routledge 2019) and forthcoming chapters, “You Can’t Change the Heart Without Telling a Story” (Humanities Perspectives in Peace Education: Re-Engaging the Heart of Peace Studies, ed. Nicole Johnson. IAP Peace Education series) and “A Journal of the Pandemic Year: Teaching at the Margins in the Age of Novel Coronavirus” (Coronavirus and Vulnerable People, eds. Laura Finley & Pamela Hall, Cambridge). She is an active member of her local community, having served on the boards of the Alliance YWCA, Haines House: A National Underground Railroad Site, the Alliance Area Domestic Violence Shelter, and currently services on the Ashland Center for Nonviolence Steering Committee.

Sheherazade Jafari brings over two decades of experience in international conflict resolution, community development, and gender equity to her current work as a practitioner-scholar of inclusive conflict transformation. As an educator, facilitator, researcher, and trainer, she brings an equity lens to supporting organizations and communities in building inclusive processes and cultures and to resolving and transforming conflict. She has a particular passion and strong background in gender transformation and justice, human rights, culturally rooted and faith-based peacebuilding, as well as fostering a more inclusive and equitable approach to conflict resolution practice and pedagogy. Her recent research includes a focus on gender-inclusive peacebuilding, particularly how to engage in gender transformative work within diverse religious and cultural contexts. Previously Sheherazade served as the Founding Director of the Point of View Retreat and Training Center for Peacebuilding Collaboration at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University, where she worked with students, faculty, and partners across the international peacebuilding community to support conflict resolution processes and create learning opportunities for diverse groups and communities.  She also served as a Diversity Advisor as well as a Co-Chair of the Carter School’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee.

Dr. Pushpa Iyer is an activist, practitioner, scholar, and teacher, in conflict resolution, peacebuilding, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Her work to bring peace between Gujarat’s (India) divided Hindu and Muslim communities laid the foundation for her social justice work. Her research in South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and the United States, has focused on identity-based conflicts, non-state armed groups, and peacebuilding. Dr. Iyer’s current research centers on developing approaches to decolonizing the mind through a historical and contextual understanding of how colonized minds impact knowledge acquisition and dissemination. As Senior Technical Advisor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Catholic Relief Services, she designs and develops programs that facilitate attitudinal and behavioral changes for a more equitable and inclusive organizational/ societal culture.

Dr. Iyer published her coffee table book, “Gandhi’s Gujarat: Vibrant Diversity through the Center for Conflict Studies.” She is currently writing a book titled “Challenging the Binary: Decolonizing Antiracism Approaches with Compassionate Courage” (Routledge, 2023.) Dr. Iyer is a Visiting Scholar at her alma mater, the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University, where she received her Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution. She also holds an MBA in International Management from the University of East London, U.K. After graduating from George Mason University, Dr. Iyer was an Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution at the Middlebury Institute and served as the Institute’s first Chief Diversity Officer.

Dr. Iyer is the founder and director of the Center for Conflict Studies, which has successfully run many initiatives, including a Summer Peacebuilding Program, a Certificate in Conflict Resolution, and a research-cum-practice initiative for racial equity – Allies at MIIS. A current initiative of the Center is Compassionate Courage, an intervention approach for resolving identity-based conflicts. Dr. Iyer serves on the Board of various non-profits, has organized eight conferences and symposiums, is a frequent speaker and trainer on various social justice issues and writes on topics that stir her conscience.

Dr. Doles Jadotte has a PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from Nova Southeastern University: School of Humanities and Social Sciences and a graduate certificate in Qualitative Research. He has experience in both research and practice in this peace and justice. He currently teaches for Walden University and Nova Southeastern University.

Dr. Christina Campbell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on prenatal lifestyle choices on the health of mothers and their children, and the intersection of food and peace. Dr. Campbell teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in medical nutrition therapy, reducing consumer food waste, and introduction to the US food system.

Dr. Simon Cordery is Chair of the Iowa State University History Department. He is the author of three books and co-editor, with Christina Campbell, of Building Positive Peace (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023). He teaches courses in Western Civilization, British history, and the history of sports.

Dr. Marica Hale, Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director. Dr. Hale is concerned with the human security and public health impacts of global environmental change, having come to understand that healthy ecosystems rely on healthy human communities. Justice lenses inform her research and pedagogy including critical theory, environmental justice and just sustainabilities. She is especially interested in how cities can serve as agents of global human security in the context of shifting geopolitics. With a B.A. in International Development and Sustainability, and an M.A. and PhD in Urban Planning and Regional/International Development from UCLA, her research is at the nexus of social and environmental conflict, exploring issues around global environmental change, human security, environmental justice, migration, water, and agriculture. She sits on the Community Sustainability Council of the Greensboro City Council and is a member of the United Nation’s Security Sector Reform Network. Classes frequently taught include Histories and Theories of Conflict Resolution (PCS 600); Skills and Techniques of Conflict Management (PCS 605); Conflict Transformation at the Food-Water Nexus (PCS 432/632); and Conflict and Culture (PCS 309).

Dr. Nicole (Niki) Johnson is professor of religious studies at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio, where she also directs the program in Peacebuilding & Social Justice. Niki teaches courses at the intersection of religion and peace studies, including a first-year seminar on faith-based social justice and upper-level courses on religious conflict and peacebuilding, ethics, and theologies of nonviolence. She is the author of Practicing Discipleship: Lived Theologies of Nonviolence in Conversation with the Doctrine of the United Methodist Church (Wipf & Stock, 2009), Faithful Witness in a Fractured World: Models for an Authentic Christian Life (Cascade, 2019), and editor of Humanities Perspectives in Peace Education: Re-Engaging the Heart of Peace Studies (Information Age Press, 2021). Niki is currently working on a multi-faith study of the lived religious perspectives of “local” heroes of social justice.

Alison Castel is an Assistant Professor at Regis University, and completed her Ph.D. at George Mason University’s School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR), where she specialized in narrative approaches to conflict, peacebuilding, and transitional justice. Her ethnographic field research in rural Colombia investigated the narrative dynamics between the state and local communities as reparations laws are implemented as part of current peace processes. Castel holds a BA in Spanish and Sociology from University of Wisconsin-Madison and a M.S. Ed. in Intercultural Communication from the University of Pennsylvania. Castel was a Rotary Peace Fellow in 2009 at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, involved in field studies on the Thai-Burma border and in Cambodia.

Matt Thierry is a PJSA board member and liaison to activists. He has a B.A. in world literature and cultural studies and an M.A. in philosophy and religion from University of California at Santa Cruz and the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) respectively. Matt is currently the middle school social studies department chair for a California independent school and doctoral student at CIIS, with a concentration in ecology and religion. He has authored or co-authored various articles on philosophy, bioregionalism, extremism, and peacebuilding and has presented at conferences on diverse topics ranging from cosmic evolution, political religion, technology and spirituality, and green criminology. Matt’s past activism has focused especially on socioecological justice work and critically endangered species.

Swasti Bhattacharyya (PhD, RN) has been a professor of religious studies and an applied ethicist for two decades. She is a 2021-2022 Research Associate/Visiting Professor in the Women Studies and Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. Her current long-term ethnographic project explores how current generations are living out Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave’s (Gandhi’s disciple, friend, confidant, and spiritual successor) commitments to peace and nonviolence. Her latest publication, “Shiva’s Babies: Hindu Perspectives on the Treatment of High-Risk Newborn Infants” in Religion and Ethics in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (Oxford University Press, 2019) and her book Magical Progeny, Modern Technology (SUNY, 2006) combine her experiences as a Registered Nurse with her expertise in ethics and the study of religion. Dr. Bhattacharyya also serves on the American Academy of Religion’s Committee on the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession and on the board of the Peace and Justice Studies Association

Matthew Johnson holds an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies from Hacettepe University (Turkey) and a BA in Journalism from the University of Maryland, where he began his activism organizing against war, poverty, racism, mass incarceration, and gender-based violence. He also studied nonviolent civil resistance under Michael Nagler and attended the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict’s first James Lawson Institute. During the Occupy Movement, he began a career in (local) conflict resolution and restorative justice, introducing those practices to the Occupy encampments in D.C. He has published several articles and contributed to many books related to gender, racial, social, and restorative justice and is co-author/editor (with Dr. Laura Finley) of the 2018 book Trumpism: The Politics of Gender in a Post-Propitious America. He is a frequent contributor to PeaceVoice and The Good Men Project, and he is known for criticizing orthodoxy and groupthink — even among those whose goals he shares. He is a past contributor to PeaceVoice and The Good Men Project (as a writer and editor). He has also served as an educator in a variety of contexts including public and private schools, summer camps, detention centers, community colleges, and the virtual space (as a cross-cultural dialogue facilitator and trainer). He currently works as a UX Researcher.

Laura Finley is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Barry University in Miami, Florida. She is also author, co-author or editor of more than thirty books and numerous book chapters and journal articles. In addition, Dr. Finley is actively involved in a number of peace, justice and human rights groups. She is a board member of The Humanity Project and Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Prior to being elected co-chair, Dr. Finley was Publications Chair for PJSA. She also coordinates PJSA’s Speaker’s Bureau.

Jennie Barron is the Chair of the Mir Centre for Peace at Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC, where she has been an instructor since 2007, teaching peace studies, environmental conflict, justice and peacebuilding, and restorative justice. Recently, she completed a PhD through Carleton University, focusing on urban space, food sovereignty, and the revival of the commons. Previously, her academic attention was on social movements and the politics of environmental-Indigenous solidarity work. She has a background in community development and activism around a range of issues, from anti-Iraq war activism to pesticide bans to school gardens to resistance to large-scale mining and low-level military flight testing in Nitassinan (Labrador). She has served on the board of the Nelson Food Cupboard and currently volunteers with Nelson Restorative Justice. She has been a member of PJSA since 2015 and served on the organizing committee for the PJSA conference in Nelson, BC in 2016. She really feels that she has found her home in PJSA and PACS-Can and is eager to contribute by getting more deeply involved in these organizations as a PJSA director and a Canadian representative on the board.

Dr. Polly O. Walker is of Cherokee descent and a member of the Cherokee Southwest Township. She is Associate Professor Emeritus of Juniata College and former Director of the Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Elizabeth Evans Baker Professor of Peace Studies. Dr. Walker was awarded her doctoral degree at the University of Queensland, Australia, where her research focused on conflict transformation between Aboriginal and Settler Australians. She has published in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals and contributed chapters to a number of edited volumes on topics related to cross cultural issues in conflict transformation, Indigenous approaches to peace, and the role of ritual and performance in peacebuilding. Polly is co-editor, along with Dr. Cynthia Cohen and Prof. Roberto Varea, of Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict. She is the co-author of the related toolkit, and contributor to the project documentary Acting Together on the World Stage. Dr. Walker was a lead trainer and program developer in a six-year international Kastom Governance program in Vanuatu, which was conducted under the auspices of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, AusAid and The Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs. Polly also conducted mediation training with the Solomon Islands National Peace Council, and conflict transformation training with an Aboriginal Community Development organization on Palm Island in Queensland, Australia. Dr. Walker served as PJSA’s liaison to the International Peace Research Association.

Ellen Lindeen, Professor Emeritus, has worked as an educator, academic, and writer throughout her professional career. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in English Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master of Arts degree in Literature from Northwestern University, and a Certificate of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. At Waubonsee Community College from 1996-2018, Professor Lindeen taught English Composition, Shakespeare, and she created and offered the interdisciplinary courses, Peace Studies & Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights & Social Justice. Her work in Peace Studies includes: a Fulbright-Hays Grant to study Gandhi and teaching non-violence, India, summer 2008; graduate work in International Law and Human Rights at Arcadia University, Arusha, Tanzania, summer 2010; teaching at Canterbury Christ Church University, England, spring 2012; volunteer work, Haiti, summer 2013; and graduate work in Refugee Rights at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, Quito, Ecuador, summer 2015. Lindeen wrote the chapter, “Film as a Force for Peace,” for Using Popular Culture to Teach Peace (2015) and she publishes articles in Truthout, Counterpunch, Huntington News, Common Dreams, The Peace Studies Journal, The Portland Alliance, and English Journal, among others. She currently serves on the boards of the Peace & Justice Studies Association and Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Sherrie Alexander is an anthropologist and researcher with a background in both cultural and biological anthropology. Her Master’s thesis focused on human-nonhuman primate interactions and community conservation in northern Morocco. She has also conducted ethnographic research on Muslim foodways and perceptions of animal welfare in Islam. Ms. Alexander’s later coursework in peace and conflict studies sparked an interest in ethics, human rights, and medical anthropology. She recently completed her DEI Certificate with the UAB Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and is an adjunct instructor in the UAB Department of Anthropology. In her free time, Ms. Alexander loves to spend time outdoors gardening and enjoying the company of her human family, as well as two cats, three dogs, and two goats

Anna Hamling is Professor in the Department of Culture and Media Studies at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. She is the author of four monographs on the religious essays of LN Tolstoy (Russia) and Miguel de Unamuno (Spain). She has written over 60 articles and encyclopedia entries covering diverse topics of religion, philosophy and Spanish and Latin American culture and literature. Her analyses of Tolstoy’s convictions subsequently led her to pursue research on nonviolence and she had two chapters published in 2018 in The Routledge History of World Peace from 1750 to the Present and in Gandhi and the Word, Lexington Books, Lanham. Currently she has an active research agenda that focuses on nonviolence and intercultural dialogue. She is the sole editor of Contemporary Icons of Nonviolence published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2020 and Women and Nonviolence forthcoming in 2021. She co-organized number of conferences on nonviolence and intercultural dialogue in UK in 2019 and online in 2020. She is also engaged in the variety of events that promote nonviolence and intercultural dialogue. Anna served as PJSA’s Liasion to PACS-Can and its Canadian Membership Chair 2019-2020.

Sarah Doerrer is a student, researcher, and analyst currently living in Los Angeles, California. Her interests range from study abroad to peace education. She is also interested in higher education, international exchanges, and genocide prevention. She worked as an assistant Research Analyst at West LA College. Her education includes Loyola Marymount University – Ed.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, and American University.

Steven Schroeder is Teaching Chair in the Peace and Conflict Studies program at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Schroeder completed his Ph.D. in modern European history at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on the root causes of oppression and conflict, and the attempts to establish durable peace in the aftermath of violence and war. Schroeder is currently teaching in the History and Peace and Conflict Studies programs at UFV, and he coordinates the community engagement component of the peace program, in which Peace and Conflict Studies students apply peacebuilding skills in conflict transformation and reconciliatory work in the community.

Amal Khoury is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Khoury specializes in peace and conflict studies, with an area focus on the Middle East. She also has an active research agenda that focuses on peacebuilding and post-conflict reconciliation. Her scholarship includes a co-authored book Unity in Diversity: Interfaith Dialogue in the Middle East, Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 2007; journal articles, “ Lebanon after the Civil War: Peace or the Illusion of Peace?,” The Middle East Journal. Vol. 65, No. 3, Summer 2011 and “The Case of the 2006 War in Lebanon: Reparation? Reconstruction or Both?”, International Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 17, Issue 1, January 2013; and book chapter “Bridging Elite and Grassroots Initiatives: The Road to Sustainable Peace in Syria,” in Post-Conflict Power-Sharing Agreements: Options for Syria. Palgrave Macmillan. 2018.

Jinelle Piereder is a second year PhD student in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. Supervised by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon, Jinelle uses approaches and tools from complexity science to study how ideologies are constructed, contested and perpetuated. In the context of specific global challenges, she hopes to add to what is known about the role of ideological conflict – on psychological, social, and material levels – within public policy-making and social movements. While completing her Masters of Global Governance at the BSIA, Jinelle worked as a CIGI Graduate Fellow on Asia Pacific security and empathy-building in the East and South China Seas. As part of her degree, she also completed an internship with a leading civic rights network, CIVICUS, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Jinelle completed her undergraduate work at Wilfrid Laurier University, focusing on international humanitarian law and disarmament, and North and Sub-Saharan African conflicts. She was a researcher for Project Ploughshares’ 2013 Armed Conflict Report and assisted in coordinating the PJSA 2013 Conference.

Elavie Ndura, Ph.D., is George Mason University’s 2015-2016 Presidential Fellow for Diversity and Inclusion, and a tenured Professor of Education. She is an international education expert and practitioner with over 20 years of experience in developing, implementing and managing intercultural education, peace and nonviolence capacity building programs in the United States and Burundi. She is the founder and coordinator of the Shinnyo Fellowship for Peacebuilding through Service and Education at George Mason University. She has pioneered youth peacemaking leadership development through community engagement in Burundi. Her signature interdisciplinary research, scholarship, and practice that unite multicultural peace education, and conflict prevention and transformation have been featured in her six books, more than 30 book chapters and professional journal articles, and numerous invited presentations and keynotes highlighting the central role of formal and non-formal education in advancing inclusive excellence, social cohesion, and peacemaking leadership.

Michael Minch, Ph.D. is a professor of peace studies and political philosophy at Utah Valley University. He was the director of the Peace and Justice Studies program at UVU for 12 years, stepping aside in 2016. He is the founder and director of Summit: The Sustainable Mountain Development and Conflict Transformation Global Knowledge and Action Network. This NGO is building the world’s largest database in respect to sustainable development and conflict transformation. It also develops innovative programs on the ground in West Africa, Haiti, the Balkans, and elsewhere. Minch is also on the Board of Directors of the Education for Global Peace Forum. He conducts research and fieldwork, teaches, and directs study abroad programs, in addition to the locations noted above, in Latin America, Russia, Central Asia, Northern Ireland, and Russia. He has published work on democratic theory, conflict transformation, reconciliation, theology, ethics, economic theory, political ecology, and more.

Wendy Kroeker teaches at the Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) in the undergrad Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies department and in the MA in Peacebuilding and Collaborative Development program. As well, she is the Co-Director of the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP). Wendy completed her MA Theology at the Mennonite Brethren Seminary in California. After significant years of practice within the conflict transformation field, she has entered the Peace Studies Ph.D. program at the Arthur Mauro Centre at the University of Manitoba where she is a Ph.D. Candidate and close to completing her dissertation on the “Role of Local Peacebuilders: The Philippines as Case Study.” Wendy specializes in community conflict transformation processes as an instructor at CMU and in locations around the globe. She has over 15 years of experience as a community mediator, conflict transformation trainer, peace program consultant, program manager for international development projects and university instructor. The Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, Ukraine, India, Bangladesh, and Palestine are some of the locations in which she has worked over the past two decades with indigenous groups, NGO staff, community and religious leaders, and various educators.

Elham Atashi, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program at Georgetown University. She holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. She is a certified mediator and negotiator having received her training from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Dr. Atashi teaches and writes on issues relating to truth telling and the politics of memory, restorative justice, post-conflict transformation and the role of youth and civic organizations in peacebuilding. She serves on the editorial board of the African Peace and Conflict Journal and has been on a consultative body in assessing and developing mechanisms for dealing with the legacy of the past injustices in countries such as Northern Ireland and Afghanistan. Dr. Atashi also works extensively as a practitioner for several international organizations supporting transformative local community reconciliation, justice and peacebuilding initiatives. She is also a professional dialogue facilitator conducting workshops with a focus on youth as migrants and refugees.

Doug Archer is Librarian Emeritus at Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries where he was employed since 1978 most recently as liaison to the  Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Keough School of Global Affairs.  He is also an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren and a career long defender of intellectual, academic and religious freedom.

Doug is past co-chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association.  In addition, he is a past member of the governing Council of the American Library Association (ALA), the Board of Directors of the Freedom to Read Foundation, the Leroy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund Board of Trustees and past chair of the ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee and its Intellectual Freedom Round Table.

Fatima Ahmed has studied towards a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Waterloo and is currently working towards a Masters in Adult Education at St. Francis Xavier University. During her career, she has been fortunate enough to work in places like the Canadian Arctic, Vanuatu and Botswana and has completed academic exchange in Sweden. Her community involvement has varied from volunteering and organizing at the grassroots level to serving as steering committee members for regional and national committees. For her self directed graduate program, Fatima is interested in looking at spiritual healing for those experiencing stress-induced mental distress.

Matt Meyer is an internationally recognized author, academic, organizer, and educator who was recently elected Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA). He also serves as National Co-chair of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the oldest interfaith peace and justice group in US history. As former National Chair of the War Resisters League, he is second only to A.J. Muste— “dean of the US peace movement” —in having been elected to the top position of both historic organizations. Based in New York City, Meyer is a true internationalist, and has led seminars, trainings, and conferences in over sixty countries on five continents; he is the United Nations representative for IPRA, and the Africa Support Network Coordinator for War Resisters’ International. Meyer also Chairs the International Fellowship of Reconciliation Financial Advisory Committee.

Daryn Cambridge leads curriculum development and educational design for US Institute of Peace’s online courses. Daryn joins USIP after 4 years with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, where he served as senior director for Learning & Digital Strategies and helped co-found Freedom Beat Recordings – a record label and website that explores the role of music in nonviolent resistance. Daryn is also a peace educator in residence and adjunct professor at American University in Washington, DC, where he teaches courses on education for international development, peace pedagogy, and nonviolent action. His research interests include peace education, nonviolent action, distance learning, and online pedagogy. He has several years experience designing and facilitating trainings and workshops for learners across the world of all ages. He has worked or consulted in this capacity with organizations such as Common Cause, The Close Up Foundation, The Democracy Matters Institute, The Student Conservation Association, Learn-Serve International, One World Education, and the Institute for Technology and Social Change. He serves on the boards of the Democracy Matters Institute and the Peace and Justice Studies Association. He has a M.A. in International Training and Education and a professional certificate in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, both from American University. He received his B.A. from Middlebury College.

Amy Cox, PhD, earned her doctorate in Political Science from McGill University, an M.A. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from Arcadia University, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Temple University. Dr. Cox’s scholarly expertise is international security, particularly political violence, ethnic conflict, and terrorism. She has completed fieldwork in Quebec and Ireland. Dr. Cox is a scholar-practitioner, facilitating numerous conflict resolution workshops including Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshops at Graterford SCI. Dr. Cox was awarded the United States Institute of Peace to Support Public Education for Peacebuilding grant to support the IPCR Forum on Transforming Conflict and Building Peace in 2013. Her more recent scholar-practitioner pursuits include the development of the IPCR program and curriculum, the creation and facilitation of ‘Interrupting Hate’ workshops, advancing local social justice efforts and working to bring public dialogue projects to the Philadelphia area.

Timothy Donais is an associate professor in the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, where he teaches in the field of peace and conflict studies. His current research focuses on questions of ‘ownership’ and ‘inclusivity’ in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding, and he has conducted field research in Bosnia, Haiti, and Afghanistan. He is the author of Peacebuilding and Local Ownership: Post-Conflict Consensus-Building (Routledge, 2012), The Political Economy of Peacebuilding in Post-Dayton Bosnia (Routledge, 2005), and the editor of Local Ownership and Security Sector Reform (Lit Verlag, 2008); he is also the author of more than a dozen journal articles and book chapters. He currently serves as the interim coordinator of the newly-formed Peace and Conflict Studies Association of Canada (PACS-Can).

Dr. Kevin Higgs is from North Alabama and grew up in the Birmingham area. As a child, he experienced the dynamic changes that took place in this city during the Civil Rights Movement, and has been greatly influenced by its history and politics. Because of this, Dr. Higgs has focused his study, activism, and academic interest on Alabama and its issues of human rights, civil rights, LGBT rights, and the theology and political thought that has come out of the American South. Dr. Higgs approaches these realities with a global, multi-cultural perspective informed by philosophies of nonviolence and theologies of liberation. He has spent significant time as an activist for the homeless community of Birmingham, and has worked diligently in areas of peace-building within the still-segregated racial/cultural divide that continues in Birmingham. Dr. Higgs is an active member of the NAACP in the State of Alabama, working with the “Moral Monday Movement” seeking to organize activism to confront issues of poverty, labor abuse, environmental abuse, voting rights, the Prison-Industrial-Complex, and the Military-Industrial-Complex in the State of Alabama.

Randy Janzen, PhD, is the Chair of the Mir Centre for Peace at Selkirk College, in British Columbia’s southern interior, where he also teaches in the Peace and Justice Studies and Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping programs. Randy’s recent work has involved a focus on community peace education, including mediation, conflict transformation and nonviolent action. Randy’s research focus is unarmed civilian peacekeeping and he is a founding member of the global Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping/Protection Research Network.

Kelly Rae Kraemer, Ph.D., is Professor of Peace Studies at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in central Minnesota, where she served as Chair of the Peace Studies Department from 2013-2016. She is also a member of the Gender Studies faculty. Dr. Kraemer teaches introductory and capstone courses, along with more specialized courses focusing on civil resistance and nonviolent action, gender and peace, race and racism in the United States, the civil rights movement, and indigenous politics. Her research, which focuses on nonviolent action and the role of identity in social movement activism, has appeared in Peace & Change, Taiwanese International Studies Quarterly, and Peace Review among other publications. She is currently working on the manuscript for a book, tentatively titled But What About Hitler?, examining the goals and achievements of six unarmed movements against the Nazis during WWII.

An academic-activist-performer, Kate Meehan is about to begin her Ph.D. in American Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Graduating summa cum laude with a degree in Gender and Women’s Studies from York University (Toronto, Canada), she recently completed a diploma with honours in Peace and Justice Studies at Selkirk College (British Columbia, Canada). She is the recipient of numerous awards, including York’s School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Graduating Book Prize for academic excellence, and both the 2016 and 2017 Excellence in Peace Studies award from Selkirk. As a theater creator, Kate is particularly interested in the role of political theater as a method of activism and awareness-building. Her Ph.D. research interests lie in feminist explorations of American civilian militarization post-Vietnam War to the early 1990s, and the impacts of these narratives on contemporary identities and anti-war resistance today.

Dr. Edmund Pries (PhD) is Assistant Professor of Global Studies, Social Entrepreneurship, Religion and Culture, and Community Engagement at Wilfrid Laurier University where his teaching is centered in the area of Peace and Conflict Studies (including: Disarmament, International Humanitarian Law). His research focuses on religion and peace/conflict and on social contracts derived from citizenship oaths and military enlistment oaths. He also writes on pedagogy. Edmund is the recipient of two awards for teaching excellence: from Wilfrid Laurier University (2011) and from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (2014). He is the co-chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (Canada & US) and on the founding board of the newly-formed Peace and Conflict Studies Association of Canada. In addition to various articles, he recently co-edited the book Peace Studies between Tradition and Innovation (2015). A personal goal he realized last year was to walk across northern Spain along the ancient pilgrimage route known as El Camino de Santiago de Compostela – a trek of 900 km.

David Ragland is Co-Founder and Co-director for the Truth Telling project of Ferguson and a Visiting Professor at United Nations Mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica.   He researches and thinks about the moral dimensions of violence and trauma against vulnerable populations in the U.S as well as envisioning a world with reduced violence on all levels. As an activist, educator and scholar, his recent and past work is the ground level- in his home community near Ferguson, Mo. David’s analysis is drawn from the radical teaching and scholarship of MLK, particularly in his description of the Triple evils of Militarism, Racism and Materials, as an ever present part of American life-  calling us to a shift in values Dr. Ragland focuses specifically on how our society conceives justice as retributive and proposes a shift toward restorative justice to transform communities and criminal justice system and take the America’s turbulent history and lives experiences into account for policies at all levels.

Timothy Seidel teaches courses on politics, development, and peacebuilding in the Department of Applied Social Sciences and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA. He previously taught at American University and Lancaster Theological Seminary. Seidel has worked in various development and peacebuilding contexts in North America and the Middle East, including serving for several years with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), first as peace development worker in Palestine-Israel and then as director for Peace and Justice Ministries in the U.S. He is a doctoral candidate in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC.

Cris Toffolo is Professor and Chair of the Justice Studies Department at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago. She is just finishing her third term as co-chair of the board of the Peace and Justice Studies Association.  She is also a founding board member of the Educating for Global Peace (EGP), and The Truth Telling Project (TTP), and has served Amnesty International in various capacities for over 25 years. Currently she is conducting research on educational initiatives in post-genocide Rwanda. Cris has worked in many countries of the Global South, was awarded a NEH grant to work on ethnicity issues, and while on sabbatical in South Africa (2005-06) was a senior researcher for a human rights NGO for which she conducted research on anti-racism training programs. She has a Ph.D. from Notre Dame in political theory and comparative politics. Her publications include: The Arab League, Chelsea House, 2007, and Emancipating Cultural Pluralism, ed., SUNY Press, 2003.

Jack Payden­ Travers has been a social activist since he was a freshman at Iona College during the Vietnam War. Presently on a sabbatical year, he recently retired as the Executive Director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. During his career he has organized work projects for Habitat for Humanity International, the American Fellowship of Reconciliation and Witness for Peace. He has worked on the local, state and national levels. He holds a BA in History, an MA in Liberal Studies and a graduate certificate in Conflict Transformation from the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. His interest in peace studies goes back to the early 70s with COPRED. He has been a professor, middle school teacher, librarian, carpenter, house husband, cab driver, non­profit director, etc while supporting his wife’s career as an Episcopal priest. They have two grandchildren and two granddogs.

Dr. Emily Welty is an academic, ecumenist and artist living and working in New York City. She is the Director of Peace and Justice Studies at Pace University where she teaches classes focusing on nonviolence, humanitarianism and reconciliation and transitional justice. Her research focuses on the religious dimensions of peacebuilding with an emphasis on humanitarianism and nuclear disarmament as well as nonviolent social movements. She is the Vice Moderator of the World Council of Churches Commission on International Affairs and is the chair of the Nuclear Disarmament Working Group. Emily is part of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) where she works on faith-based engagement in nuclear disarmament. She is the co-author of Unity in Diversity: interfaith dialogue in the Middle East and Occupying Political Science. Emily is also a playwright and has worked with The Civilians, the Acting Studio at Chelsea Rep and the Einhorn School of Performing Arts.