Paige Morrow

Paige Morrow convenes and teaches a masters-level course in corporate governance at the Brussels School of International Studies. She is also the Executive Director of the HEC-NYU EU Public Interest Clinic in Paris, which advises non-governmental organisations on EU law and policy. She was formerly the Head of Brussels Operations at the public interest law firm Frank Bold, where she specialised in corporate governance, company law and business and human rights. Paige is a Canadian-qualified lawyer who began her career advising and litigating in the areas of human rights, employment and commercial law at McCarthy Tétrault LLP. She has also held positions at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights and the South African Legal Resources Centre.

Paige holds a Masters of Law from LSE, Juris Doctor from the University of British Columbia and a degree in international development studies from McGill University. ​Her current research focuses on corporate governance, business and human rights, and sustainable finance.

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Davide Pernice

Davide Pernice is a PhD researcher specializing in International Conflict Analysis at the Brussels School of International Studies. His research centres on why, how and if Israeli and Palestinian parties eventually engage into, or disengage from de-escalation processes spanning over multiple stages (softening-up, pre-negotiation, negotiation, etc.). He mainly focuses on the standardisable causal mechanisms that trigger and temporarily secure de-escalatory phases in the adversarial relationship between Israeli and Palestinian leadership. As conflict phases are not simply the result of random, contingent events, but rely primarily on the variable capability of decision-makers to control, drive, re-orient and manipulate strategies according to a sub-optimal set of considerations, Davide intends to compare analogous phases belonging to different conflict sequences. Dr. Yvan Guichaoua and Prof. Richard Whitman supervise his research.

Davide is also an EU official, a certified mediator and an experienced trainer in EU foreign policy. He received his MA in International Conflict and Security from the Brussels School of International Studies and his BA in Politics and International Relations from the University of London.

 

 

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Nicolas Desgrais

Nicolas Desgrais started reading for his PhD in International Relations at the Brussels School of International Studies in September 2016. His doctoral research focuses on the regional cooperation of African states in combatting terrorism in the Sahara-Sahel region. More specifically, he looks at how the threat of terrorism fosters the need for increased regional cooperation and the way this cooperation is institutionalized in regional organizations like the G5 Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin Commission. Dr. Yvan Guichaoua and Dr. Toni Haastrup supervise his research.

Nicolas has already worked extensively on African politics in the Sahara-Sahel region during his previous studies and jobs. He obtained his LL.B. at l’Université Paris X and his MA in Geopolitics at the French Institute of Geopolitics (IFG), writing on the mediation of Burkina Faso in the Malian crisis, the involvement of France and other countries in the Sahara-Sahel region and extraversion strategies in Africa. While studying, he also interned for the African Department at the French Ministry of the Armed Forces.

He has worked at the Institute of Strategic Research (IRSEM) and at the Defence Section of the French Embassy in Nigeria, where he focused on the military cooperation between France and Nigeria regarding counter-terrorism efforts against the Salafi-Jihadi insurgent group Boko Haram.

Nicolas has been a teaching assistant for Theories of Conflict and Violence and is currently a teaching assistant for Conflict and Security.

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Camilla Callesen

Camilla Callessen started reading for her PhD in International Relations at the Brussels School of International Studies in September 2016. Her research focuses on Russia’s foreign policy behaviour in the context of intractable conflicts in the post-soviet space. More specifically, she tries to find out what psychological dynamics influence Russia’s behaviour and how this behaviour feeds into the conflict dynamics based on insights from social psychology.

Camilla’s interest in this specific topic developed from course-work she did to obtain her BA in International Studies at the Aalborg University in Denmark and her MA in International Conflict and Security at the Brussels School of International Studies. Working for the United Nations and other NGOs and research institutes that focus on peacebuilding has also contributed to her interest in intractable conflicts and their constitutive dynamics.

She has been a teaching assistant for Fundamentals of Dissertation and Research (FDR) and European Foreign and Security Policy in the 21st Century. She is currently a teaching assistant for FDR.

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Azar Dakwar

Azar Dakwar started reading for his PhD in Political and Social Thought in September 2016 at the Brussels School of International Studies. His research pertains to the meaning, conditions of possibility and avenues of and for “emancipatory” politics in our current historical juncture. He looks into contemporary systemic/structural forms of domination generated by secularism’s distinction between religion and politics/state, and religion and economics (as well as the “privatization” of religion). More specifically, he interrogates the comfort zone of Frankfurt School Critical Theory with regards to its critical purchase over secularism and the “question of religion” through political theology as a strategy/mode of critique.

Before commencing his PhD studies Azar has worked as a research assistant to social scientists and political theorists and was a teaching assistant (in strategic thinking and public policy) and later a lecturer (of public policy) at Birzeit University. Also, he worked for 3 years, in various capacities and positions for Sikkuy – The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality. In addition, he has been an international fellow at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue (Vienna) since 2014, and was awarded its Fellowship Grant in 2015.

Azar holds a BSc (Hons.) in cognitive sciences from the Hebrew University and a Master’s degree in public policy (with a thesis in political sociology) from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He has as well read philosophy at Tel Aviv University and was a fellow at its Minerva Humanities Centre’s “Living Together” research group (2012-2014).

At BSIS, he has been teaching assistant and seminar leader for Fundamentals of Dissertation and Research (FDR) and Negotiation and Mediation. He is currently a teaching assistant for FDR.

His academic publications can be read at: https://kent.academia.edu/AzarDakwar

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Abdullah Al-Jabassini

Abdullah Al-Jabassini started reading for his PhD in International Relations at the Brussels School of International Studies in September 2016. His doctoral research focuses on the Syrian conflict, exploring rebel behaviour, rebel governance and civil resistance to insurgent organizations. He is supervised by Dr. Yvan Guichaoua.

His broad research interests cover a range of historical and contemporary issues across Syria and Iraq, which include political parties, insurgent organizations, paramilitaries, rebel governance, sectarianism and tribal conflicts.

Abdullah obtained his BA in International Relations and Diplomacy at Al-Kalamoon University in Syria, and his MA in Global Affairs at the Bahçeşehir University in Turkey. He also studied at Sciences-Po Paris in France in 2011.

For the past five years, Abdullah has worked as a researcher for several think tanks that are located in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Turkey. He has extensive experience in reporting and providing analysis on the military and political developments occurring in rebel-held areas, as well as government-controlled areas in Syria.

He has been a teaching assistant for Conflict and Security and is currently a teaching assistant for Theories of Conflict and Violence.

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Anna Peychev

Anna Peychev started her PhD in Law in September 2016. Her doctoral research focuses on the aftermath of the EU economic and financial crisis and the potential to stabilize European economic and monetary governance and, by extension – the entire system of EU law, by devising a functional equivalence to legitimacy (democratic and judicial control) in the context of the post-crisis Treaty arrangements. Academic areas of interest include EU law, Systems Theory, legal philosophy, crisis-law, and economic law.

Prior to that, she earned an LL.M. in International Law at the Brussels School of International Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations with a minor in Religious studies from the University of Calgary, Canada.

Outside of academia, she has worked in the NGO and political sectors.

She is currently a teaching assistant in Fundamentals of Dissertation and Research (FDR).

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Dr Joost Hiltermann

Joost Hiltermann is Lecturer in Politics in the Middle East at the Brussels School of International Studies. In his day job, he is Program Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, www.crisisgroup.org. He obtained his PhD in Sociology (1988) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a dissertation on the mobilisation and political activism of workers and women under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. He has been with Crisis Group since 2002. Before that, he was Executive Director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch. In the second half of the 1980s he lived in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he worked for the Palestinian human rights NGO Al-Haq while conducting dissertation research.

 

Joost Hiltermann has been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University (1990-2002) and a Professorial Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies (2001), both in Washington, DC. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, Middle East Report, and other publications. His doctoral dissertation was published by Princeton University Press in 1991 (Behind the Intifada), and a book on the use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war by Cambridge University Press in 2007 (A Poisonous Affair).

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Dr Maria Mälksoo

Maria Mälksoo earned her PhD in International Studies at the University of Cambridge (2008). Before joining BSIS, she worked as Senior Researcher in International Relations at the University of Tartu in her native Estonia. She has held post-doctoral research fellowships at the Centre for International Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science (2015), Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (2012), and the University of Tartu (2010-2014). Dr Mälksoo has policy experience from the Estonian Ministry of Defence, International Centre for Defence Studies in Tallinn, and the Office of the President of Estonia. She is a member of the editorial boards of International Political Anthropology and Contemporary Security Policy, and currently serves at the CEEISA Executive Committee and the EISA Governing Board.

Student contact hours:

Autumn 2017:   Mondays 4-5pm and Tuesdays 10-11am

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Sian Lewis-Anthony

Sian’s research concerns the domestic application of international human rights standards. She has advised on & developed training materials, and delivered training for judges and prosecutors in a number of jurisdictions in the Middle East, the Balkans and West Africa for non-governmental, inter-governmental, and governmental organisations and agencies.

Teaching interests: International Law, International Human Rights Law and International Migration Law.

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