Contributor Bios for Settlers in Contested Lands

Settlers in Contested Lands
Territorial Disputes and Ethnic Conflicts
Edited by Oded Haklai and Neophytos Loizides

Contributors

Ehud Eiran is a Martze (Assistant Professor) in the Department of International Relations, School of Political Science at the University of Haifa, Israel. Eiran holds degrees in law and political science from Tel-Aviv, Cambridge, and Brandeis Universities. He has held research appointments at Harvard Law School, Harvard’s Kennedy School, and Brandeis University and was a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at MIT. Dr. Eiran has published in scholarly and popular outlets including the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, the New York Times online, Foreign Affairs online, and Newsweek. He is interested in theoretical and practical aspects of international conflict and conflict resolution, with a particular interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Oded Haklai is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He is the author of Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel, which was awarded the Shapiro Prize by the Association for Israel Studies, as well as numerous articles and chapters on the Middle East and ethnic conflict. He is also the co-editor of Democracy and Conflict Resolution: The Dilemmas of Israel’s Peacemaking (with M. Elman and H. Spruyt) and Democratization and Ethnic Minorities: Conflict or Accommodation (with J. Bertand).

Evangelos Liaras is a García Pelayo Research Fellow at the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales (CEPC) in Madrid. He holds a BA degree in history from Harvard University and MS and PhD degrees in political science from MIT, and worked as an elections observer in Sri Lanka in 2010. His doctoral dissertation on electoral engineering in multi-ethnic societies was awarded the Juan Linz Prize for Best Dissertation by the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association.

Neophytos Loizides is a Reader in International Conflict Analysis at the University of Kent and a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow (2014–2015). He is the author of The Politics of Majority Nationalism: Framing Peace, Stalemates and Crises, forthcoming from Stanford University Press. He has previously held fellowships at the Belfer Center at Harvard University and the Solomon Asch Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Loizides is currently the associate editor of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow (2015–2016).

Ian S. Lustick is the Bess W. Heyman Professor in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in comparative politics, international politics, and social science applications of agent-based modeling computer simulations. Among his scholarly works are For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1988); Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank/Gaza (1993); Trapped in the War on Terror (2006); and Exile and Return: Predicaments of Palestinians and Jews (2005), edited with Ann Lesch.

Jacob Mundy is an Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University, where he also contributes to Middle East and African studies. He is the co-author with Stephen Zunes of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press, 2010) and the co-editor of The Post-Conflict Environment (University of Michigan Press, 2014). His next book, Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence, will be published by Syracuse University Press in 2015.

Denise Natali is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, where she specializes in the Middle East, the trans-border Kurdish issue, regional energy security, and post-conflict state-building. Dr. Natali has spent more than two decades researching and working in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria, and has authored numerous publications on Kurdish politics, economy, and energy, including The Kurdish Quasi-State: Development and Dependency in Post-Gulf War Iraq (Syracuse University Press, 2010) and The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran (Syracuse University Press, 2005), which was the recipient of the 2006 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title (published in Turkish as Kurtler ve Devlet: Iraq, Turkiye ve Iran’da Ulusal Kimligin Gelismesi [Istanbul: Avesta Press, 2009]). She provides regular commentary for national and international media, is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and a columnist for Al-Monitor.

Roberta Pergher is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University. After earning her PhD in history from the University of Michigan in 2007, she was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and an Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She has published widely on Italian fascism and on settlement policy. Her co-edited volume (with Giulia Albanese), In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence, and Agency in Mussolini’s Italy, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. She is currently completing a book manuscript, Fascist Borderlands: Nation, Empire and Italy’s Settlement Program, 1922–1943, which explores Fascist efforts at nation- and empire-building in newly conquered territories.

Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and Program Director for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. He is the co-author with Jacob Mundy of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution, as well as the author of other books and articles addressing North African and Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, human rights, and strategic nonviolent action. He serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, a contributing editor of Tikkun, and chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

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