Senior Faculty Fellows
The CPDD Senior Faculty Fellows are faculty in the UMass Boston Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance, and in other departments at UMass Boston, whose research and practitioner work contributes to core areas of CPDD’s work.
Samuel "Sammy" Barkin (PhD, Columbia University) is a prolific scholar in the areas of international relations theory and international organization, with particular attention to global environmental politics, international monetary politics, theories of sovereignty, and constructivist theory.
His work has been published in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Revicew, Foreign Policy Analysis, Global Environmental Politics, Global Governance, Millennium, and Environmental Politics, among other journals, as well as in numerous edited volumes.
Leila Farsakh, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston
Leila Farsakh (PhD, University of London) is chair of the Political Science Department in UMass Boston's College of Liberal Arts. Her areas of focus include Middle East politics, comparative politics, and politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. She is the author of Palestinian Labor Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation (London: Routledge, second edition, 2012). She has also published in a wide range of journals on questions related to the political economy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, alternative to partition, and international migration. Dr. Farsakh has worked with a number of international organizations, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. Since 2008, she has been a senior research fellow at the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University in the West Bank. In 2001, she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission in Cambridge, MA.
Amani El Jack (PhD, York University) is an associate professor in the UMass Boston College of Liberal Arts and an affiliate faculty member with the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance. She is a prolific scholar in the areas of gender, globalization, transnational migration, conflict resolution, islam, and international relations. Through her career, she has engaged in research and policy consultations with various global partners and scholarly networks. These include the Women in Conflict Zones Network; the International Center for Transitional Justice; the Globalization of Protracted Refugee Situations in long-term refugee camps project; Landmine Action; the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University; and the Bonn International Centre for Conversion.
Susan Jeghelian (JD, Boston College) is the executive director of the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) and an instructor with the UMass Boston Graduate Programs in Conflict Resolution. At MOPC, she leads the institutional planning, policy and budget development, fundraising, outreach, and qualification of practitioners for service on public contracts. She oversees the design, administration, and evaluation of programs and initiatives serving public agencies, legislators, courts, and communities. Susan has been with MOPC since 1993. Prior to orchestrating its move to UMass Boston, she led the implementation of Executive Order #416, which integrated dispute resolution into state government. Susan also helped to found the University Network for Collaborative Governance (UNCG), a national network of programs in colleges and universities that, through service and scholarship, enable citizens and their leaders to engage in dialogue, discussion, problem solving, and conflict resolution around public issues. She has served on UNCG's Steering Committee for many years, collaborating with other university centers on practice, teaching, and research to promote the field and impact communities.
Paul Kowert
Paul Kowert is a widely-published scholar specializing in foreign policy, international relations, and political psychology. His research focuses on the way leaders differ in their use of information and advice, the way they incorporate normative principles into their policy choices, and the way both leaders and the general public form perceptions of other countries. Ongoing research projects include the study of national image and international conflict in East Asia as well as studies of leadership, governance, and foreign policy in African states. His publications include: International Relations in a Constructed World (1998, with Vendulka Kubálková and Nicholas G. Onuf), Groupthink or Deadlock: When Do Leaders Learn from Their Advisors (2002), Cultures of Order: Leadership, Language, and Social Reconstruction in Germany and Japan (2007, with Katja Weber), and Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations: An Ideational Alliance (2012, with Vaughn P. Shannon). He is the recipient of research and teaching grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Fulbright Foundation, among others.
Mehr's research centers on understanding social transformation at the individual, group, and wider structural levels. She contributes to the study of radicalization in the United States, exploring cognitive and emotional theories to understand pathways into and out of white supremacy. Her research on micro dynamics of political participation provides insights into alternate public spheres, the development of state boundaries, and how people experience the state in South Asia. Finally, she has contributed to the study of social accountability frameworks and citizenship, and advises international development agencies on programs and interventions around the world. Prior to UMB, she was a Post-doctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh, and before that worked for over a decade with international non-profits, principally The Asia Foundation.
Adugna Lemi, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Boston
Adugna Lemi (PhD, Western Michigan University) is chair of the Economics Department in UMass Boston's College of Liberal Arts. He also teaches courses in International Trade, Political Economy of Development in Africa, and, in the UMass Boston Honors College, a special topics course titled “The real relationship between the poor and the rich countries.” His research interests focus on economic development in Africa; capital flow and its determinants in developing countries; multinational corporations and their role in developing countries; and issues of poverty, trade, and income diversification in Ethiopia. He is currently working on three research projects titled “Chinese firms in Africa: Evidence from a unique Chinese firm level data,” “Trade and climate change as determinants of changes in cropping pattern in Africa,” and “Trade mis-invoicing and capital flight from Ethiopia.” Dr. Lemi’s works have been published in a number of academic journals including Empirical Economics, African Trade Journal, and International Journal of Education Economics and Development, among others. He has served as a visiting professor and consultant at Addis Ababa University (AAU) in Ethiopia and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) in Nairobi, Kenya.
Madhawa "Mads" Palihapitiya (MA, Brandeis University) is the associate director of the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) and an instructor with the UMass Boston Graduate Programs in Conflict Resolution. He has over ten years of experience in the conflict resolution field, with significant work in the areas of violence prevention, program design, and program evaluation. He has been with MOPC since 2007, heading the research and evaluation unit. In this role, Mads oversees research on all major MOPC mediation, collaborative governance, and deliberative democracy programs, projects, and initiatives. Prior to working at MOPC, he was the director of programs at the Foundation for Co-Existence in Sri Lanka where he engaged in high-risk mediation and violent conflict prevention efforts, including co-creating a state-of-the-art Conflict Early Warning and Early Response System for Sri Lanka. Later, CPDD consulted Mads in the design and implementation of a similar system for the Interfaith Mediation Center in Kaduna, Nigeria as part of the USAID TOLERANCE project. Mads currently teaches a three-credit course on Collaborative Governance for the UMass Boston master's program in Public Administration.
David Pantalone, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston
David Pantalone (PhD, University of Washington) is an associate professor in the Psychology Department in UMass Boston's College of Liberal Arts, director of the Department's clinical psychology doctoral program, and a clinical psychologist/behavioral scientist at The Fenway Institute of Fenway Health, New England’s largest LGBT-focused health center. His empirical research focuses on the intersections of clinical and health psychology. Specifically, he studies intervention development and the dissemination of evidence-based interventions for preventing HIV through reducing substance use; improving HIV medication adherence and engagement with care through reducing alcohol use; and coping with stressful experiences, including identity-based discrimination among racial or ethnic minority and sexual minority men who are living with HIV. Dr. Pantalone is highly active within the profession of psychology. He collaborates on interdisciplinary investigator teams for a variety of NIH-funded projects; is an associate editor of the journal Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity; and was President of APA's Division 44 during 2017-18. In honor of his contributions, he was selected as a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and three of its divisions: Clinical (Division 12), Health (Division 38), and LGBT Psychology (Division 44).
Jeff Pugh (PhD, Johns Hopkins University) studies the role of non-state actors and international institutions influencing governance and peacebuilding in the Global South, especially in migrant-receiving areas of Ecuador. His book manuscript, currently under review, argues that under the informal host-society expectations of economic contributions, combined with their political and social invisibility, migrants often gain access to rights, resources, and protection indirectly through brokered relationships within a governance network of non-state, international, and state organizations. In addition to his role at UMass Boston, Jeff is also the executive director of the Center for Mediation, Peace, and Resolution of Conflict (CEMPROC), based in Quito, Ecuador. Under his leadership, CEMPROC has reached over 5,000 adults and children from more than 20 countries around the globe with its conflict resolution and peacemaking training programs. Jeff has developed innovative experiential and study abroad programs to teach international conflict resolution at the university level through a combination of service-learning, simulations, lecture/discussion, and other teaching strategies. Currently, he co-directs the UMass Boston/FLACSO Summer Institute on Conflict Transformation across Borders in Quito, Ecuador.
Karen Ross is an associate professor in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance and a senior fellow at the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development, both at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. Previously, she was an instructor at the Global & International Education Program at Drexel University and the Inquiry Methodology Program at Indiana University.
Karen's teaching and research focus on issues at the intersection of dialogue, peace-building, social activism, and education. She conducts research to help understand the impact of grassroots social change interventions and the way these interventions fit into efforts at broader societal transformation. In addition, Karen focuses on methodological issues related to how we conduct research about peace-building and social justice work and how we can do so in more inclusive and democratic ways. Among other areas, her work focuses on Israeli-Palestinian peace-building, restorative justice in US educational and correctional institutions, and dialogic teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms.
In addition to her academic work, Karen is a dialogue facilitator/facilitator trainer and evaluator. She is an Associate at Essential Partners and has consulted for organizations including UNESCO, GPPAC, the Edward Kennedy Institute, and the American Friends Service Committee.
Courtenay Sprague (PhD, University of Witwatersrand) leads CPDD's Global Health and Development Research Group, as well as the Global Health track of the PhD Program in Global Governance and Human Security. Her research investigates factors that underpin health inequities among socially excluded or marginalized populations, exploring in particular the ways in which structural health determinants and health systems factors shape the health status and outcomes of women living with and at risk of HIV, as well as protective policies and interventions that support women’s health and their capabilities. Through her work, Courtenay has sought to capture the lived experiences of socially marginalized women and to elevate their voices in published research, using qualitative research methods to capture their agentic intentions and actions within social context. A trademark of her work, particularly in South Africa, has been to use the data and evidence in health systems (hospitals and clinics) to inform and guide proposed changes in social policy and clinical practice, while drawing attention to the state’s constitutional obligation in South African law and human rights violations. This research has informed changes at the national (South African) policy level related to treatment guidelines for women and children with HIV, as well as international policy discussions on safe infant feeding practices for women with HIV.
Catriona studies how gender shapes international conflict mediation and diplomacy, with a particular focus on the United Nations system. In particular, she is interested in how the everyday narratives and practices of international institutions create barriers for the participation of women and other marginalized groups in high-level discussions. In addition, she writes on methods, methodology, and interdisciplinarity in IR. Catriona’s first book, The Politics of Women, Peace, and Security in UN Mediation, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Her work has been published in the European Journal of International Relations, International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Hague Journal of Diplomacy. In 2020, she was the Scholar’s Circle Honoree at the International Studies Association-Northeast meeting. Catriona is also a member of the Folke Bernadotte Academy’s international research working group on Women, Peace and Security. Prior to joining UMass Boston, she was Assistant Professor at Worcester State University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Douglas Thompson, Lecturer in Conflict Resolution
Doug Thompson (MSc, Northwestern University) is an instructor with the UMass Boston Graduate Programs in Conflict Resolution and a senior mediator with the Consensus Building Institute (CBI) in Cambridge, MA. He has a background in environmental protection and dispute resolution and management. He spent 25 years with the Environmental Protection Agency in various technical and management capacities, including as a mediator of environmental conflicts with the EPA dispute resolution program. Doug’s wide-ranging case work has included matters related to issues as diverse as drinking water disinfection, marine mammal concerns, nuclear waste and chemical weapons cleanup, state-federal interactions around technical and policy water quality issues, the credibility of green marketing and sustainable product claims, pandemic flu planning, federal environmental enforcement matters, tribal capacity building in the environmental area, and endangered species. He has mediated extensively in the MA court system and has experience in workplace and family disputes.
Stacy D. VanDeveer is Professor of Global Governance and Human Security in the John C. McCormack School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He currently serves as Graduate Program Director for Global Governance and Human Security PhD program. During the 2023-24 academic year he was Zennstrom Visiting Professor of Climate Change Leadership in the Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University in Sweden. His CPDD-related research interests include environmental and energy politics, global environmental policymaking and institutions, comparative environmental politics, connections between environmental and security issues, and the global politics of resources and consumption. He teaches a CRHSGG seminar on “Environmental Conflict & Peacemaking” and is an active member of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association. In addition to authoring and co-authoring over 130 articles, book chapters, working papers and reports, he has co-edited or coauthored 12 books including Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics (2023), Global Environment: Institutions, Law & Policy (2020) Routledge Handbook of the Resource Nexus (2018), The European Union and the Environment (2015), Waste, Want or War? (2015), Transnational Climate Change Governance (2014) and Comparative Environmental Politics (2012).
Eben Weitzman (PhD, Columbia University) is a social and organizational psychologist specializing in the study of conflict. His work focuses on conflict within and between groups, with emphases on organizational conflict, cross-cultural conflict, and intergroup relations. In addition to his teaching and research, Eben does conflict resolution, organizational development, and dispute resolution systems design with a wide variety of individuals and organizations in both the public and private sectors. These have included organizations in human rights, health care, education, organized labor, government, law enforcement, social services, business, and the courts. He also served as grievance officer for the UMass Boston Faculty Staff Union from fall 2004 to spring 2008.