ACUNS Board Nominations

As of June 2012, multiple positions will be open on the ACUNS Board of Directors. ACUNS members are invited to nominate qualified individuals, including themselves, for these positions. Please send nominations with curriculum vitae, bio (300-500 words), and a short supporting statement outlining what the nominee will bring to ACUNS. Please send nominations to bburns@wlu.ca by March 1, 2012.

ACUNS Board of Directors

 Christer Jönsson, Chair

Christer Jönsson is Professor of Political Science at Lund University, Sweden, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1995-97 he served as President of the Swedish Political Science Association, and in 1996-99 as President of the Nordic International Studies Association (NISA). He has been Visiting Professor at Stanford University and Kyung Hee University, Seoul, and a Fellow at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study. He has served on the editorial boards of International Organization as well as Global Governance. In addition to international organization, his research interests and publications range from negotiation theory and diplomacy to the role of transnational network and NGOs in global governance. He has contributed to the Sage Handbooks of International Relations (2002) and of Conflict Resolution (2009) as well as the Oxford Handbook on the United Nations. His most recent co-authored books are Organizing European Space (2000) and Essence of Diplomacy (2005).

Abiodun Williams, Chair Elect

Abiodun Williams is vice president of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention.  Previously, he served as associate dean of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.  From 2001 to 2007, he served as director of strategic planning in the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General.  In that capacity, he advised Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon on a full range of strategic issues including U.N. reform, conflict prevention, peacebuilding and international migration.  He held political and humanitarian affairs positions in U.N. peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, and Macedonia from 1994 to 2000.

Williams began his career as an academic and taught international relations at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, University of Rochester, and Tufts University.  In 1990 he was awarded the Constantine E. Maguire Medal for outstanding service to the School of Foreign Service and its students, and in 1992, he won the School's teaching award.  He was the recipient of a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs in 1990.

Williams has served on the boards of the United World Colleges, Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific, Jesuit International Volunteers, and QSI International School of Skopje.   He holds an M.A. (Hons) from Edinburgh University, and M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. degrees from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.  He has published widely on conflict prevention, international peacekeeping and multilateral negotiations.

Aldo Caliari

Aldo Caliari is Director of the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project at the Center of Concern in Washington, D.C. Originally from Argentina, he has a Master of International Policy and Practice from George Washington University (2007), with a focus on economics and finance. He also holds a Masters Degree from the Washington College of Law, American University, on International Legal Studies (2000), where he was honored with the Outstanding Graduate Award. He earned his first law degree in Argentina, at the Universidad Nacional de Tucuman Law School, in 1997. Since 2000 Aldo has been staff at the Center of Concern where he was at first responsible for advocacy and coalition-building activities around the International Conference on Financing for Development (Monterrey, Mexico, 2002) and its follow-up, as well as bringing a human rights approach to the work of the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project. Aldo has done considerable writing and public speaking on issues of global economic governance, debt and international financial architecture. In the last few years he has focused on linkages between trade and finance and policy "coherence" between financial and trade Institutions. He routinely acts as a consultant on these topics for international organizations, foundations, media and civil society groups and networks. Mr. Caliari has extensive experience and broad knowledge on issues of global economic governance. He has been carrying out advocacy and coalition-building work with CSOs, intergovernmental and governmental officials and academics before international organizations -United Nations, Bretton Woods Institutions, financial standard-setting bodies, the World Trade Organization - for about 10 years. He has extensive experience in advising governments, foundations and civil society organizations on negotiations involving debt, trade and finance, global economic governance.  He has a proven talent to take leadership in bringing innovative new ideas to life, conceptualize practical ways and fundraise for them, that he has demonstrated throughout his time at the Center of Concern.

Sam Daws

Sam Daws directs a project on UN Governance and Reform at the University of Oxford, and serves as Senior Advisor to the United Nations Foundation in Washington DC.  He was for six years the Executive Director of the United Nations Association of the UK, and previously served from 2000 to 2003 as First Officer in the Executive Office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.  Sam is concurrently managing director of 3D strategy, a social enterprise consultancy which provides services to international organisations, governments and foundations, and he has worked in a variety of UN-related roles in New York, Geneva, London and Calcutta over the last 20 years, including serving on working attachment to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

After studying Social Anthropology and then International Conflict Analysis, Sam undertook doctoral studies on the UN at the University of Oxford, and was a visiting fellow at Cambridge and Yale Universities.  He has been a visiting lecturer in international law at University College, London and the UN University in Tokyo.  He has authored or co-edited six books on the work of the United Nations, including the Oxford Handbook on the UN.  He is currently writing a book for Oxford University Press on the reform of the UN Security Council. Sam also has a postgraduate qualification from CASS Business School in Grantmaking, Philanthropy and Social Investment, and completed the Foundation and Endowment Asset Management programme of London Business School in 2007.  He has served on the boards on a number of international NGOs and charitable trusts, and is an alumnus of the Prime Minister's Top Management Programme of the UK National School of Government, and of the UNU's International Leadership Academy in Amman, Jordan.

Sam hopes, by 2014, to establish a UK-based policy research centre on the United Nations.



Roger Coate

Dr. Roger Coate is Paul D. Coverdell Endowed Chair of Public Policy at Georgia College & State University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former Director of the Richard L. Walker Institute of International Studies at the University of South Carolina. He joined the faculty at GCSU in January 2009 after having taught at USC since 1981 and before that at Arizona State University for four years. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University and holds a M.A. from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Professor Coate's research and teaching interests focus on public policy related to multilateral relations, international organization and global governance. His specific areas of expertise include: the UN system, international organization reform, international administration and development, the role of civil society in global governance, nonprofit management, public-private partnerships, and U.S. multilateral foreign policy. He is author or co-author of more than a dozen books and monographs, including: United Nations Politics: Responding to a Challenging World; The United Nations and Changing World Politics; International Cooperation in Response to AIDS; United States Policy and the Future of the United Nations; and Unilateralism, Ideology and United States Foreign Policy: The U.S. In and Out of UNESCO.

Lorraine Elliott

Lorraine Elliott  BA MA (Hons) (Auckland), PhD (ANU), is a Professor in the Department of International Relations. Her research focuses on the global politics of the environment; environmental governance in Southeast Asia; peace and security including non-traditional security; cosmopolitan political theory; cosmopolitan militaries; transnational harm, cosmopolitan ethics and the politics of consent; transnational environmental crime. Her books include International Environmental Politics: Protecting the Antarctic (Macmillan, 1994), The Global Politics of the Environment (Macmillan, 2nd edition 2004; 1st edition 1998) and (co-edited with Graeme Cheeseman), Forces for good: cosmopolitan militaries in the 21st century (Manchester University Press, 2005). As well as numerous book chapters, she has also published articles in The Pacific Review, Global Society, Contemporary Security Policy and the Australian Journal of International Affairs. Career highlights include an Exchange Fellowship, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and Australian Academy of Social Sciences (2007); Visiting Research Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford (2002); Visiting Fellow, Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics (2001); Research grant, United States Institute of Peace (2002); Australasian Political Studies Association L F Crisp Medal for originality and intellectual contribution (1997); Vice-Chancellor's Endowment for Excellence for retention of outstanding staff; Member, Australian National Committee, Council for Security Cooperation Asia Pacific (CSCAP).

Ramesh Thakur

Dr. Ramesh Thakur is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He was Vice Rector and Senior Vice Rector of the United Nations University (and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations) from 1998-2007. Educated in India and Canada, he was a Professor of International Relations at the University of Otago in New Zealand and Professor and Head of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University, during which time he was also a consultant/adviser to the Australian and New Zealand governments on arms control, disarmament and international security issues.

Melissa Labonte

Melissa Labonte is assistant professor of political science at Fordham University.  She received her Ph.D. and A.M. in Political Science from Brown University, and has taught previously at Providence College, the University of Richmond, and Brown University.

Dr. Labonte's research and teaching interests include international and nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations system, humanitarian politics, peacebuilding, multilateral peace operations, conflict resolution, human rights, and West African politics.  Her recent publications include journal articles and book chapters on non-state actors and peacebuilding; humanitarian access, protection, and human rights; elite capture and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone; jus post bellum and peacebuilding; and the UN humanitarian reform.  She is co-editor, with Kendall W. Stiles (Brigham Young University), of the International Organization Section's (IO) component of the International Studies Association's (ISA) Compendium Project.  Dr. Labonte has also recently completed a book manuscript entitled Human Rights, Humanitarian Intervention, and the Responsibility to Protect: Back to the Future?

Dr. Labonte serves on the Boards of Directors of the Center for International Policy Studies at Fordham University and the Friends of ACUNS. She previously served as Chair of the IO Section of ISA.  In 2009 she conducted research with the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly on issues including Security Council reform, the Global Financial Crisis, and the Responsibility to Protect, and in 2010 she conducted research in Sierra Leone to examine the peacebuilding implications of decentralization and local governance.

Rama Mani

Dr. Rama Mani, Senior Research Associate, Centre for International Studies (University of Oxford); Director of the Global Project 'Responsibility to Protect: Southern Cultural Perspectives'

An internationally renowned expert on peace, justice and human security, Dr. Rama Mani is a Councillor of the World Future Council. She is a Senior Research Associate of the University of Oxford's Centre for International Studies, and Director of the Carnegie Corporation-funded project: 'Responsibility to Protect: Southern Cultural Perspectives'. She is an Associate Faculty Member and former Director of the New Issues in Security Course at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP).

She was previously Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She served the Commission on Global Governance as their Senior External Relations Officer. She was Oxfam GB's Africa Strategy Manager and Regional Policy Coordinator for Oxfam (GB) based in Ethiopia and Uganda, and she has extensive peace building experience as a practitioner and scholar across Africa, Asia and Latin America. She is the initiator of Justice Unlimited, a small non-profit that promotes peace and justice through creative and cultural wisdom, and supports other innovative initiatives. She is the author of "Beyond Retribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War" (Polity/Blackwell, 2002/2007), and numerous academic articles on peace and security. She serves on the Boards of several international institutions and journals. A French national and Indian Overseas Citizen, she holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Cambridge and an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University.

Lise Morjé Howard

Lise Morjé Howard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. She was previously the founding director of the Master of Arts Program in Conflict Resolution at Georgetown. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and her A.B. in Soviet Studies magna cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University. She has held pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at Stanford University (Center for International Security and Cooperation), Harvard University (Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs), and the University of Maryland (Center for International Development and Conflict Management).

Dr. Howard's research and teaching interests include international relations, comparative politics, conflict resolution, civil wars, peacekeeping, and area studies of the Balkans and sub-Saharan Africa. She has published several articles and book chapters on these topics. Her book, UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2008, and it won the 2010 Book Award from the Academic Council on the UN System (ACUNS). She is also working on several other projects including one on the norm of negotiated settlements in civil wars, and another on U.S. mediation in ethnic conflicts.

Dr. Howard has also received awards for her work on peacekeeping from the Soroptimist International, the Barnard College Alumnae Association, and the James D. Kline Fund. She has received support from the MacArthur Foundation, the Institute for the Study of World Politics, the National Security Education Program, and the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Dr. Howard is fluent in French and Russian, and speaks some Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Spanish, and German. Prior to beginning graduate school, she served as Acting Director of UN Affairs for the New York City Commission for the United Nations.

Jan Wouters

Jan Wouters (°1964) is Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam EU and Global Governance and Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven (KULeuven). He is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, President of the Flemish Foreign Affairs Council and Of Counsel at Linklaters. He is Member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts. He studied law and philosophy in Antwerp and Yale University (LLM 1990), was a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School and obtained his PhD at KULeuven (1996). He taught at the Universities of Antwerp and Maastricht, was Visiting Professor at Liège and Kyushu University and Référendaire at the European Court of Justice (1991-1994). He is Editor of International Encyclopedia of Intergovernmental Organizations and Vice-Director of Revue belge de droit international. He has published widely (over 360 publications including 30 books and 70 international journal articles). Recently he published a treatise on international law (Grondlijnen van Internationaal Recht, 2005, with M. Bossuyt) and on the World Trade Organization (The World Trade Organization. A Legal and Institutional Analysis, 2007, with B. De Meester) as well as edited volumes such as The European Union and Conflict Prevention (2004), Legal Instruments in the Fight Against International Terrorism (2004), The United Nations and the European Union (2006), Multilevel Regulation and the EU (2008), The Europeanisation of International Law (2008), European Constitutionalism Beyond Lisbon (2009), Belgium in the Security Council (2009) and the European Union and Peacebuilding (2010). Apart from his participation in many national and international research projects and networks, he often trains international and national officials, advises a number of international organizations and frequently comments international events in the media.