Training & Curriculum

Deborah Avant

Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Twitter: @DeborahAvant1

Deborah Avant is the Sié Chéou-Kang Chair for International Security and Diplomacy at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Her research (funded by the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation, among others) has focused on civil-military relations, and the roles of non-state actors in controlling violence and generating governance. She is author/editor of Civil Action and the Dynamics of Violence in Conflicts (with Marie Berry, Erica Chenoweth, Rachel Epstein, Cullen Hendrix, Oliver Kaplan, and Timothy Sisk), The New Power Politics: Networks and Transnational Security Governance (with Oliver Westerwinter); Who Governs the Globe? (with Martha Finnemore and Susan Sell); The Market for Force: the Consequences of Privatizing Security; and Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons From Peripheral Wars, along with articles in such journals as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Perspectives on Politics, and Foreign Policy. 

She was the inaugural director of the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy. Under her leadership the Sié Chéou-Kang Center launched the Private Security Monitor (http://psm.du.edu/), became a model for promoting engaged scholarship on the many different policy consequential organizations that affect peace, security, and governance, grew from one to nine affiliated faculty member, and became the first home to the International Studies Association’s newest journal: the Journal of Global Security Studies, for which she serves as editor in chief. She is an observer member of the ICoCA and, in 2013, was awarded an honorary doctorate from University of St. Gallen for her research and contribution toward regulating private military and security companies. Deborah Avant regularly advises governments, companies, NGOs, and others on the roles that many play in contemporary global governance and serves on numerous governing and editorial boards.

Naazneen Barma

Doug and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Email: Naazneen.Barma@du.edu
Twitter: @naazneenbarma

Naazneen H. Barma is Director of the Doug and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy, Scrivner Chair, and Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She is also one of the founders and a co-director of Bridging the Gap, an initiative devoted to enhancing the policy impact of contemporary international affairs scholarship. She is a political scientist whose work spans topics including peacebuilding, foreign aid, economic development and institutional reform, natural resource politics, and global governance, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Barma’s research has been supported by the United States Institute of Peace, the Minerva Research Initiative, and the Berggruen Institute among others, and has been published in several refereed journals and edited volumes. She is author of The Peacebuilding Puzzle: Political Order in Post-Conflict States (Cambridge University Press, 2017), co-author of Rents to Riches? The Political Economy of Natural Resource-Led Development (World Bank, 2011), and co-editor of Institutions Taking Root: Building State Capacity in Challenging Contexts (World Bank, 2014) and The Political Economy Reader: Markets as Institutions (Routledge, 2008). She has also co-authored policy-oriented pieces on global political economic order that have appeared in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Foreign Policy, and The National Interest. Prior to joining the Korbel School faculty, Barma was a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School from 2000–2010 and previously worked from 1998–2001 and 2007–2010 as a development practitioner at the World Bank.

George DeMartino

Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Email: george.demartino@du.edu

George DeMartino is a professor of international economics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies of the University of Denver, where he teaches courses on international trade, the normative foundations of global economic policymaking, theories of political economy, and professional ethics in international affairs. He also is a co-founder and co-director of the MA Program in Global Finance, Trade and Economic Integration. Prior to that, he taught at Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA), and Trinity College (Hartford, CT). He earned his BA at Harvard University; an MA in Industrial Relations at Warwick University (Coventry, England); and his PhD in Economics at the University of Massachusetts. Prior to graduate school, Professor DeMartino served as a union organizer and negotiator for AFSCME, AFL-CIO in Connecticut.

DeMartino researches the ethical foundations of economic theory, policy, and professional economic practice. His book The Economist’s Oath helped to launch the new field of professional economic ethics. DeMartino is a Past President of the Association for Social Economics and a current board member of the Association for Integrity and Responsible Leadership in Economics and Associated Professions. His most recent book is the Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics, co-edited with Deirdre McCloskey. He is now at work on The Tragedy of Economics (University of Chicago Press).

Judd Devermont

Center for Strategic and International Studies
Email: JDevermont@csis.org
Twitter: @JDevermont

Judd Devermont is the director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Prior to joining CSIS, he served as the national intelligence officer for Africa from 2015 to 2018. In this position, he led the U.S. intelligence community’s analytic efforts on sub-Saharan African issues and served as the DNI’s personal representative at interagency policy meetings. From 2013 to 2015, he was the Central Intelligence Agency’s senior political analyst on sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. Devermont also served as the National Security Council director for Somalia, Nigeria, the Sahel, and the African Union from 2011 to 2013. In this role, he contributed to the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa, signed by President Obama in 2012, and managed the process that resulted in U.S. recognition of the Somali government for the first time since 1991. Mr. Devermont spent two years abroad working at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria from 2008 to 2010.

Mr. Devermont is a lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs where he co-teaches a class on U.S. intelligence analysis on sub-Saharan Africa. He is also a senior adviser at Kupanda Capital, a pan-African investment platform, and at Fraym, a data analytics firm. Mr. Devermont is a frequent commentator in print, on radio, and on television, and he has testified before Congress. He has published articles in a range of journals, such as Foreign Affairs and African Affairs, as well as newspapers and magazines like Bloomberg, the Hill, Lawfare, and Mail & Guardian in South Africa. In addition, Mr. Devermont hosts Into Africa, a biweekly podcast series on African politics and policy. He has lived in South Africa and Cote d’Ivoire, and he has traveled widely across the continent. Mr. Devermont has a master’s degree in African studies from Yale University and bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California, Los Angeles

Rachel Epstein

Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Email: Rachel.Epstein@du.edu

Rachel Epstein is a Professor of International Relations and European Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. In addition, she is the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs and an affiliated faculty member with the Sie Cheou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy. She earned her MA and PhD from Cornell University’s Department of Government and her AB from Stanford University in International Relations. She specializes in international political economy, international security, and the role of international organizations in eliciting compliance from target states and states-in-transition. She has held two post-doctoral fellowships at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy and was also an Advanced Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Freie Universitaet in Berlin in 2016.

She has published widely on subjects concerning European Union enlargement, the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the developmental prospects of post-communist countries and the politics of finance, financial crisis and foreign bank ownership. She is the author of In Pursuit of Liberalism: International Institutions in Postcommunist Europe (Johns Hopkins 2008) and Banking on Markets: The Transformation of Bank-State Ties in Europe and Beyond (Oxford 2017),  for which she was awarded the Ed A. Hewett Book Award. She was a co-editor at the Review of International Political Economy from 2017 to 2020.

Leanne Erdberg Steadman

United States Institute of Peace
Email: lerdberg@usip.org
Twitter: @LErdberg

Leanne Erdberg Steadman is the director of violent extremism at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where she leads the Institute’s work on preventing and countering violent extremism, including overseeing the RESOLVE Network—a global research consortium—as well as USIP’s newest work on violent extremist disengagement and reconciliation. Directing USIP’s work on violent extremism, Steadman helps advance a deeper understanding of the dynamics that drive terrorism and extremist violence by leveraging peacebuilding tools and techniques, providing a platform to explore novel policy and practical approaches, and linking peacebuilding and conflict disciplines with the unique empirical, practical, and political facets of the study of terrorism.

Prior to joining USIP, Steadman served on the National Security Council staff at the White House as a senior advisor on homeland security, as well as director of African affairs. She’s also worked at the Department of State as a counterterrorism advisor and at the Department of Homeland Security as a presidential management fellow. Steadman has also worked in the private sector with Accenture Federal Services and she began her public service career with positions at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the World Health Organization, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and on a U.S. congressional campaign. Before her work in foreign and public policy, Steadman co-founded an independent record label. She holds a Juris Doctor with honors in international law and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s in mass communication studies, both from Boston University.

Cullen Hendrix

Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Email: cullen.hendrix@du.edu
Twitter: @cullenhendrix

Dr. Cullen Hendrix is Professor at the Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Senior Research Advisor at the Center for Climate & Security. He holds research appointments at Hiroshima University, the University of Texas at Austin and the Colorado School of Mines, and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Peace Research. He is the coordinating investigator of the Rigor, Relevance, and Responsibility Program, a Carnegie Corporation-funded project that makes ethical considerations an integral part of policy-relevant research and engagement so that future generations of academics can engage in the policy world with confidence and clarity. With Idean Salehyan, he created and maintains the Social Conflict Analysis Database.

Dr. Hendrix has broad interests in contentious politics, the political economy of development, and environmental politics. At the Korbel School, he leads the Environment, Food and Conflict (ENFOCO) Lab, which leverages collaborations between physical and social scientists and policymakers to produce scholarship and analysis on issues at the intersection of the environment, food security, and conflict. His articles have appeared in journals ranging from Nature, Nature Climate Change, Biological Reviews, Ecology and Society, Marine Policy and Global Environmental Change to the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution and Journal of Peace Research. Hendrix has authored reports published by or consulted for organizations including the Asian Development Bank, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Oxfam America, the National Intelligence Council, USAID and the World Food Programme, among others. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation’s Coupled Natural and Human Systems program, the US Department of Defense Minerva Initiative, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation, and he was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo. He holds a PhD and MA from the University of California, San Diego, where he was a fellow of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and a BA from Kalamazoo College. Prior to joining the Korbel School, he held faculty positions at the College of William & Mary and the University of North Texas.

Oliver Kaplan

Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Email: oliver.kaplan@du.edu
Twitter: @OliverKaplan

Oliver Kaplan is an Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and is the Associate Director of Human Trafficking Center. He is the author of the book, “Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves” (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which examines how civilian communities organize to protect themselves from wartime violence. He was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and previously a postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University in the Woodrow Wilson School and at Stanford University.

His research interests include empirical studies of civil wars and human rights. As part of his research Kaplan has conducted fieldwork in Colombia and the Philippines. His research has been funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Smith Richardson Foundation and other grants and has been published in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Stability, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, CNN, and National Interest. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and completed his B.A. at UC San Diego.

Jason Lyall

Dartmouth College
Email: Jason.Lyall@Dartmouth.edu
Twitter: @jaylyall_red5

Jason Lyall is the inaugural James Wright Chair of Transnational Studies and Associate Professor in the Government department at Dartmouth College. He also directs the Political Violence Field Lab at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding. His research examines the effects and effectiveness of political violence in civil and conventional wars. He is currently writing a book on how to improve humanitarian assistance in fragile and conflict settings like Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen. A second project investigates the relationship between inequality, racism, and intergroup relations in violent settings, including within police forces, armies, and rebel organizations.

His book, Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War (Princeton University Press, 2020), was recently named a "Best of 2020" book by Foreign Affairs. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics, and World Politics, among others. He has received funding from AidData/USAID, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the MacArthur Foundation, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, and the United States Institute of Peace. He has conducted fieldwork in Russia and Afghanistan, where he served as the Technical Adviser for USAID’s Measuring the Impact of Stabilization Initiatives (MISTI) project during 2012-15. He was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in 2020.

Julia Macdonald

Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Email: julia.macdonald@du.edu
Twitter: @jumacdo

Julia Macdonald is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies where her research focuses on state threat assessments, use of force decisions, and U.S. military strategy and effectiveness. Her first book project (co-authored with Jacquelyn Schneider) traces the rise of unmanned technologies in the US Department of Defense and is under contract with Oxford University Press. Her second book project lies at the intersection of coercive diplomacy and foreign policy decision making and investigates the importance of leadership beliefs in assessments of threat credibility during international crises. Examples of her research can be found in recent editions of Security Studies, the Journal of Conflict Resolution,Journal of Strategic Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, Texas National Security Review,Armed Forces and Society, as well as in a range of policy outlets.

Macdonald has previously held fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and with theSecurity Studies Program at MIT. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the George Washington University, an M.A. (Hons) in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. (Hons) in History, Philosophy, and International Relations from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. She has previously worked at the RAND Corporation and the New Zealand Ministry of Defense.

Tricia Olsen

Daniels College of Business and Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Email: tricia.olsen@du.edu
Twitter: @olsentricia

Tricia Olsen is associate dean of undergraduate programs and associate professor in the Department of Business Ethics and Legal Studies. She is also the Marcus Faculty Fellow. Olsen teaches and studies about the political economy of development in emerging economies, with a focus on Latin America. In addition to publishing widely in business ethics, management and political science outlets, she has consulted for the United Nations Business & Human Rights Working Group and the World Bank, among other organizations. She is the co-director of the Daniels-Korbel Global Business and Corporate Social Responsibility Certificate.

Olsen’s book project, Varieties of Remedy: How Contestation Shapes Governance for Corporate Human Rights Abuses in Latin America, is based on her ongoing efforts to systematically collect data on corporate human rights violations, the Corporations and Human Rights Database.  In addition to her co-authored book, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy (also translated to Spanish), additional published work can be found in numerous outlets, including Organization Studies, Business Ethics Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Peace Research, and the International Journal of Transitional Justice. Olsen’s work has been supported by the Carnegie Corporation, British Academy, Fulbright-Hays, USAID, Carnegie Foundation, United States Institute of Peace, and Zennstrom Philanthropies, among others. Professor Olsen received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ryan Powers

University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs
Email: ryan.powers@uga.edu
Twitter: @rmpowers

Ryan Powers is an assistant professor in the Department International Affairs at University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs. He is also a Faculty Fellow at the Center for International Trade and Security and a Lilly Teaching Fellow at the Center for Teaching and Learning. Prior to starting at University of Georgia, he was a Post-doctoral Associate with the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2017.

He specializes in international relations and comparative politics. His research interests include public opinion on trade and other aspects of globalization, international trade agreements, foreign aid, and international organizations. His research is published or forthcoming in International Organization, Political Research Quarterly, Security Studies, and World Development. He has also published a number of pieces in Foreign Policy and on the Monkey Cage. He has received outside support for his research from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Stanton Foundation. He is affiliated with the Global Research Institute at William & Mary as a Principal Investigator on the Teaching, Research and International Policy (TRIP) Project.

Timothy Sisk

Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Email: timothy.sisk@du.edu

Timothy D. Sisk is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver and Director of the Institute for Comparative and Regional Studies at the School. At the University of Denver, he also chairs the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research.

His research, teaching and policy-oriented work focuses on democratization and electoral processes in fragile and post-war contexts. Professor Sisk also researches the role of international and regional organizations, particularly the United Nations, in peace operations, peacemaking, and peacebuilding.

Prior to joining the University of Denver in 1998, Sisk was a Program Officer and Research Scholar in the Grant Program of the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. Sisk earned a Ph.D. “with distinction” in political science from The George Washington University, in 1992, and an MA in International Journalism (1984) and a BA in Foreign Service and German (1982) from Baylor University.