ABOUT THE PROJECT CONTRIBUTORS
Project Lead
Jessica Piombo is an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), where she teaches courses on African politics and security, U.S. Foreign Policy, comparative politics, and ethnic politics and conflicts. Her teaching and research specializes on political transitions, transitional regimes and post-‐conflict governance;
institutional ways to channel and shape political identities; mechanisms to manage ethnic conflict; U.S. foreign policy towards Africa; the U.S. military’s role in reconstruction and stabilization; and on international peace negotiations in Africa. In 2012 she was on sabbatical to research how styles of international mediation influence the substance of peace negotiations in South Africa and Burundi.
Piombo joined NPS in 2003 after completing her Ph.D. at the Department of Political Science of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Piombo has been a visiting scholar at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, the University of the Western Cape (Department of Political Studies), the University of Cape Town (in the Centre for Social Science Research and the African Studies Centre), and at the Center for African Studies at Stanford University.
Essay Authors
Sarah Kenyon Lischer is an associate professor of political science at Wake Forest University in Winston-‐Salem, NC. She is the author of Dangerous Sanctuaries: Refugee Camps, Civil War, and the Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid (Cornell University Press, 2005). She has published on the topics of humanitarian crises, military intervention, African politics, and forced migration in International Security, Global Governance, the Harvard International Review, Civil Wars, and The American Scholar. Lischer has been awarded several fellowships and grants by, among others, the International Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
Ellen Messer is an anthropologist specializing in human rights and food security. She is the former director of the World Hunger Program at Brown University, and has also taught at Tufts University's School of Nutrition Science & Policy. She currently teaches in the Sustainable International Development program at the Heller School of Social Policy & Management at
Brandeis University. Dr. Messer received her PhD in ecological anthropology from the University of Michigan, after carrying out ethnobotanical fieldwork in Mexico focusing on food systems. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the topic of food policy, including:
The Human Right to Food as a US Nutrition Concern, 1976-‐2006 (2007) and Food Systems and Dietary Perspective: Are Genetically Modified Organisms the Best Way to Ensure Nutritionally Adequate Food? 9 Ind. J. Global Legal Stud. 65 (2001-‐2002).
Robert Muggah is Research Director of the Igarape Institute (www.igarape.org.br), a Principal of the SecDev Group, and a Professor at the Instituto de Relações Internacionais, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. From Brazil he directs several projects on international cooperation, violence prevention and reduction and humanitarian action in non-‐war settings.
Dr. Muggah also coordinates the research projects "States of Fragility" and "Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence" housed at the Center for Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) in Geneva and sponsored in part by the Folke Bernadotte Academy.
Previously, he was Research Director of the Small Arms Survey (2000-‐2011) and lectured at the Graduate Institute of International Studies. Dr. Muggah received his DPhil at Oxford University and his MPhil at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex.
Dr. Muggah is the editor of Stability Operations, Security and Development (New York:
Routledge, forthcoming) and co-‐editor of The Global Burden of Armed Violence (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011, 2008). He is also the author of Security and Post-‐Conflict Reconstruction: Dealing with Fighters in the Aftermath of War (New York: Routledge, 2009), Relocation Failures in Sri Lanka: A Short History of Internal Displacement (London: Zed Books, 2008), and No Refuge: The Crisis of Refugee Militarization in Africa (London: Zed Books 2006).
Dr. Muggah has also been involved in co-‐writing and advising documentary films on violence, drug policy and development.
Donna J. Nincic is Professor and Director of the ABS School of Maritime Policy and Management at the California Maritime Academy, California State University. She received her doctorate in Political Science/International Relations from New York University, and has held previous positions at the University of California, Davis; the Hoover Institution; and the US Department of Defense. Her research focuses on maritime security, particularly piracy and terrorism.
Alex Otieno earned a B.A. in History and Anthropology from University of Nairobi and an M.P.H.
from Temple University, where he is currently pursuing doctoral studies in the Health Studies Department. He has been involved in efforts aimed at developing a research and advocacy agenda for human rights in the context of HIV/AIDS in Africa, as well as in education and advocacy for fostering peace activism in both the United States and his native Kenya. Alex is a member of the American Public Health Association, American Society for Law, Medicine and Ethics, African Studies Association, and the Health Global Access Project. In addition, he is co-‐
founder of the Program for Enhancement of East Africa Communication and Education (PEACE).
He has worked on HIV/AIDS and homelessness issues in both Kenya and in the United States and is the community liaison for the Outreach Coordination Center of Project HOME in Philadelphia.
Francis Sang is the Executive Secretary of the Regional Centre on Small Arms and Light Weapons (RECSA). He served in the Kenya Police Force for 30 years holding various senior positions including Deputy Commissioner of Police. Prior to joining the Nairobi Secretariat, he was the Director of Criminal Investigation Department for 4 years. Dr. Sang has a Masters in Criminal Justice from Leicester University and a PhD in Sociology from Washington International University, USA. He is a contributor to a published book entitled International Police Cooperation: a world Perspective. He has authored a Personal and Practical Guide book entitled Gun Violence and its Impact on Human Security in Nairobi.