Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he chairs the program in Middle Eastern Studies. A native of North Carolina, Professor Zunes received his PhD. from Cornell University, his M.A. from Temple University and his B.A. from Oberlin College. He has previously served on the faculty of Ithaca College, the University of Puget Sound, and Whitman College. 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, and co-chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Erica Chenoweth, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, where she teaches courses on international relations, terrorism, civil war, nonviolent resistance, and contemporary warfare. In addition, she is an Associate Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) and has held visiting appointments at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Stanford University, UC-Berkeley, and the University of Maryland. Her book with Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2011), won the 2012 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, given annually by the American Political Science Association in recognition of the best book on government, politics, or international affairs published in the U.S. in the previous calendar year.

Howard Barrell is a senior lecturer for the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, Wales and is the former head of the university’s International Journalism graduate program. He was a journalist for over 25 years, working for both print and radio media in South Africa and in the United Kingdom. Dr. Barrell was also the former editor of the Mail & Guardian, a weekly newspaper published in South Africa that focuses on various political issues.

Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University where her areas of expertise include political development and quality of democracy, nonviolent conflict and nonviolent struggle, and political communication with an emphasis on media coverage of war. Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals including Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, Feminist Media Studies, Comparative Political Studies, and Sojourners Magazine. She has also contributed chapters to several books on nonviolent action and social movements.

Roddy Brett is Lecturer in the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the role of civil resistance in peacebuilding and democratisation in Latin America, indigenous peoples, genocide and mass atrocities and human rights issues..

Janet Cherry is a South African human rights activist, trainer and academic. She is currently a senior lecturer at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, in the Department of Development Studies. She is also a trainer for the Centre for Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) based in Belgrade, Serbia. She has been involved in research for, among others, the Human Sciences Research Council (Democracy and Governance Programme), the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the International Centre on Human Rights Policy (Geneva). 

Kevin Clements is the Foundation Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies and Director of the New Zealand National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He was on the board of the European Centre for Conflict Prevention and was former President of the European Peace Building Liaison Office in Brussels.

Anne-Marie Codur obtained her Ph.D. in Economics and Sustainable Development from Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University and a research fellow at the Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute.  She has expertise in citizen diplomacy, people-to-people peace initiatives, and civil resistance -- notably in the Middle East and Mediterranean region -- as well as in sustainable development policies and environmental economics.

Barry Gan has been a professor at St. Bonaventure University for the past 23 years after receiving his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1981 and 1984, respectively. Prior to teaching at St. Bonaventure, Dr. Gan taught high school and junior high school English for six years.

John Gould graduated from Williams College cum laude with a double major in Political Science and Studio Art. He obtained a M.A.L.D degree in 1990 from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2001.

Tom Hastings is a member of the Governing Council of the International Peace Research Association, former co-chair and current board member of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, Director of PeaceVoice (a program of the Oregon Peace Institute), founder of Whitefeather Peace House, a former Plowshares resister and nonviolent felon (twice) for peace and disarmament, and author of several books on nonviolence as well as peer-reviewed journal articles, peer-reviewed book chapters on nonviolence, and an entry in the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace.

Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies at the UN-affiliated University for Peace, and distinguished scholar with the American University’s Center for Global Peace, in Washington, DC. She is a Rothermere American Institute Fellow at Britain’s Oxford University. Her doctorate in international politics is from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth.

Lester Kurtz is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University, where he teaches nonviolence, social movements, peace and conflict studies, the comparative sociology of religion, globalization, and social theory. Professor Kurtz is also involved in helping to create a new Ph.D. program in Public Sociology.

Jason MacLeod, PhD, is conducting research on the viability of nonviolent strategies and tactics to enlarge the prospects of the self-determination in West Papua. He teaches civil resistance at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University if Queensland and in the master's course on nonviolent action at Sydney University. He taught community development at Monash University, the University of New England, and Christian Heritage College. He is author of several articles and book chapters on West Papua and nonviolent struggle.

Brian Martin is a Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He serves on the editorial board of several journals including: Public Understanding of Science, Social Alternatives, Anarchist Studies, Philosophy and Social Action, and Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification. The central theme of Professor Martin’s research is the dynamics of power, with special attention to strategies for challenging repression and exploitation.

Scott O’Bryan is an affiliate member of the Institute for International Strategy, School of Liberal International Affairs at Waseda University Tokyo, Japan. His research interests include the history of social science, consumption and mass consumer culture, environmental history, urban history, and peace history. O’Bryan received his M.A from Yale University in 1992 and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2002.

Chaiwat Satha-Anand was born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1955. He holds a PhD in political science from University of Hawaii at Manoa, professor of political science at Thammasat University, Bangkok and director of the Thai Peace Information Centre which conducts studies and activism in relation to the Thai military and social issues. Satha-Anand is an expert on non-violence, theory as well as activism, and on Islam. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on the military, alternative defence, religion and peace, Islam and nonviolence, and modern political philosophy. For several years he directed the International Peace Research Association's (IPRA) commission on non-violence and he serves at the Scientific Committee of the International University for Peoples' Initiative for Peace, IUPIP, in Rovereto Italy.

Kurt Schock engages in research that seeks to understand how civil resistance movements challenge state domination and economic exploitation. He has studied pro-democracy movements in authoritarian regimes and land reform movements in the global south that engage in collective action to promote a more equitable distribution of land and resources. His publications are numerous including journal articles and book chapters on social movements, nonviolent resistance, and political conflict.

Lee A. Smithey serves as Coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Studies program at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He is an Assistant Professor in the college’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, where he studies social movements, ethno-political conflict, and nonviolent conflict methods. He has focused much of his work on conflict transformation in Northern Ireland.

Victoria Tin-bor Hui’s research examines the dynamics of international politics and state-society relations in historical China and Europe. She received her M.A. in 1997 and Ph.D. in 2000 from Columbia University. She is the author of War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2005) which won the 2006 Jervis-Schroeder Award from the American Political Science Association and the 2005 Edgar S. Furniss Book Award from the Mershon Center for International Security Studies.