Doctoral Student Alumni
Dr. Emily Sample
Graduated 2023
Dissertation: Blood, Soil, Root, and Branch: Climate Change, Gender, and the Future of Mass Atrocity Prevention
Placed, Programs Director, Fund for Peace
Dr. Emily Sample is a Programs Director at the Fund for Peace, where she provides technical guidance on gender and environmental mainstreaming for conflict early warning/early response projects, fragility and resilience analysis, and manages the Human Rights and Business portfolio. She earned her PhD from the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. Previously, she worked at Holocaust Museum Houston and for the Ugandan National Committee on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide and Mass Atrocities. She earned her M.A. in Human Rights and Genocide Studies from Kingston University London and her B.A. from The College of William and Mary. She currently serves on the Executive Board of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and co-founded the Women’s Caucus of Genocide Scholars. Her research spans peacebuilding, climate change adaption, environmental justice, gender, and mass atrocity prevention. Her book “Building Peace in America” was published in August 2020.
Dr. Ziad Al Achkar
Graduated 2023
Dissertation: Humanitarian Action in a Digital World: How the Pursuit of Legibility Shapes the Humanitarian Act.
Website: https://www.ziadachkar.com/
Dr. Ziad Al Achkar’s research focuses on the use of digital technologies and remote sensing by humanitarian and peacebuilding organizations. He looks at the role that legibility plays in this sector, and how to develop and design responsible and ethical practices. His dissertation focuses on the pursuit of humanitarian legibility, how through technology, quantification methods, remote sensing, and other Information Communication Technologies, humanitarians made the world and the people they work with more legible, identifiable, and monitorable. In the dissertation project, he investigates three questions: First, how has digitalization and data changed or influenced the work humanitarian do? Second, how do partnerships with the private tech sector play a role in the humanitarian space, and what their influence is? Third, and lastly, but critically, is to understand the relationship between local communities and modern digital humanitarian action, or in other words, what does localization looks like (and what it ought to look like) in an increasingly digital humanitarian world?
Dr. César Estrada
Graduated 2020
Dissertation: Genocidal Mexico: The Unfolding of Mass Violence, Radical Categorization, and the Narratives of the “War on Drugs”
Placed, Post-Doc Fellowship, University of Notre Dame
Born and raised in Mexico, César Estrada earned his PhD in 2020 at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. César is currently Fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, at the University of Notre Dame. Before coming to Notre Dame, he served as a Director within the Unit of Policies and Strategies for Peacebuilding at the Secretary for Security and Citizen Protection in Mexico.
César’s doctoral dissertation examined the role of conflict narratives in the production of mass violence in Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork in Central Mexico, it examines the dynamics of lethal violence and the discursive mechanisms through which mass killing becomes justified in the public space. The final study documents a central relevance of “cleansing narratives” used by perpetrators to justify their killings; this occurs within a context of common association of victims/perpetrators to a “world of criminals”, in which their deaths become “expectable”. This study constructs a dialogue between the field of mass violence and genocide studies, and the narrative approach to violent conflict using the Mexican case.
Dr. Sixte Vigny Nimuraba
Graduated 2017
Dissertation: “Ethnic Identity Shift in Burundi”
Placed, National University of Burundi & President of Burundian Independent National Commission on Human Rights
Dr. Sixte Vigny Nimuraba has a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree from George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. He has also a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from University of Ngozi in Burundi. Currently, he is the President of the Burundian Independent National Commission on Human Rights (CNIDH), He was a Visiting scholar and the Director of Violence Prevention Initiatives at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. He is teaching at the National University of Burundi and at two other private universities in Burundi. He taught online courses such as Engaging Youth in Violence Prevention at George Mason University and Early Warning Systems and Atrocity Prevention at the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation. He was a Practitioner-in-Residence at Binghamton University’s Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention. He worked for many organizations such as Ligue Iteka, Volontari Italiani Solidarietà Paesi Emergenti (VISPE), Care International, and Conseil National pour la Lutte contre le Sida. He worked as a United Nations consultant to evaluate the inter-Burundian dialogue. Vigny’s research focuses on understanding identity and identity shifts, particularly how these dynamics relate to genocide and the prevention of genocide.
Dr. Bridget Moix
Graduated 2016
Dissertation: “Choosing Peace: Local Peacebuilder Perspectives on Agency, Relational Responsibility, and the Future of International Peacebuilding”
Placed, Peace Direct
Professional Website
Bridget serves as Peace Direct’s US Executive Director, sharing our work and the work of our partners with the US peacebuilding community, funders, and policymakers. She has worked for 20 years on international peace and conflict issues, with a focus on US foreign policy. Prior to joining Peace Direct’s staff, she was part of its founding US board for four years. From 2013-2015, Bridget served as Atrocity Prevention Fellow with USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation. She spent nine years lobbying on US foreign policy and peace issues with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, where she developed and led the Peaceful Prevention of Deadly Conflict program. She has also worked with the Quaker United Nations Office, Oxfam America, American Friends Service Committee, and the World Policy Institute. Bridget directed the Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City, a Quaker center of hospitality and international understanding, from 2006-2008. She also worked in Capetown, South Africa, with the Quaker Peace Centre during her graduate studies internship. Bridget holds a PhD with George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, where she focused her dissertation on understanding the motivations of local peacebuilders and how the international community can better support them. Her book, “Choosing Peace: Agency and Action in the Midst of War“, describes how local and global peacebuilders can work together. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and Quaker studies at a variety of institutions, including Haverford College, Columbia University, George Washington University, and Eastern Mennonite University. Bridget lives in Washington, DC, and has two sons who challenge her peacebuilding skills every day.
Dr. Tetsushi Ogata
Graduated 2014
Dissertation: “The Socialization of Threats in Mass Killing”
Placed, University of California Berkeley
Professional Website
Dr. Tetsushi Ogata is Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Soka University of America. He is also the Convener of the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network (GPANet), a formal-informal network of scholars and experts in the field of genocide prevention to provide theoretically and empirically based analyses to the interested governments and the international bodies. He has served in the Executive Board of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) and in the Editorial Board of the academic journal, “Genocide Studies and Prevention” (GSP). Previously, he was Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and was the Director of the Genocide Prevention Program at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR). While at S-CAR, he organized a series of genocide prevention workshops that trained officials from 80 UN member states between 2007-10; supported the launch of national committees for genocide prevention in member states of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region in Africa; and collaborated with the European governments to advance their polices on genocide prevention through organizing the GPANet meetings. Most recently, he is involved as a Steering Group member in the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC), a state-led initiative to exchange knowledge and practices to build national architectures for atrocity prevention. He received his B.A. in Liberal Arts with International Studies concentration from Soka University of America and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University.
Dr. Borislava Manojlovic
Graduated 2013
Dissertation: “Search for Positive Peace in Eastern Slavonia: Contentious Historical Discourses and School Communities”
Placed, Seton Hall University
Professional Website
Dr. Borislava Manojlovic is the Assistant Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University Korea. She is an expert in peacebuilding, transitional justice, dealing with the past, peace education, and atrocities prevention. Before joining GMU Korea, she was both research director and faculty at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations where she led and implemented numerous research projects that focus on peacebuilding, education, governance, and atrocities prevention. Before joining academia, she worked on minority- and reconciliation-related issues with the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in both Croatia and Kosovo for over seven years. The experience of wars in the Balkans in the 1990s and her desire to understand the roots of violent conflicts shaped her life trajectory and dedication to conflict prevention and peacemaking. Her book Education for Sustainable Peace and Conflict Resilient Communities was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017.
Prof. Manojlovic received her master’s degree from Brandeis University and her doctorate from George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.
Dr. Ashad Sentongo
Graduated 2013
Dissertation: “Re-imagining Decentralization: Improving of Relationships between Ethnic Groups and the State in Uganda”
Placed, Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation
Professional Website
Dr. Ashad Sentongo earned a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University, M.A in Coexistence and Conflict from Brandeis University, and postgraduate Management Diploma from Damelin School of Management (South Africa). As a Drucie French Cumbie Fellow at S-CAR, his research work focused on power-sharing and ethnic conflict in Africa. He previously worked with the Genocide Prevention Program at GMU as Program Officer on Prevention of Genocide attached to the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), and helped to establish the Regional and National Committees in Member States. Dr. Sentongo’s publications focus on managing ethnic conflicts, conflict transformation, and traditional approaches to conflict resolution in Africa.