Carter School Faculty

The eastern region of Ukraine has been an intense battleground since 2014, when Russia controversially annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and invaded the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. Though a ceasefire was called, it has been violated daily. More than 10,000 people have died and roughly 1.6 million are registered as internally displaced people (IDP).

But a step toward hope and peace may be on the horizon, thanks to George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, and their new project funded by a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

Dr. Özerdem is Dean of the Carter School and specializes in conflict resolution, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. With over 20 years of field research experience in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, El Salvador, Indonesia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Liberia, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, and Turkey.

Dr. Chavis is a historian and museum educator whose work focuses on the history of racial violence and civil rights activism and Black and Jewish relations in the American South, and the ways in which the historical understandings of racial violence and civil rights activism can inform current and future approaches to peacebuilding and conflict resolution throughout the world.

Dr. Borislava Manojlovic is a professor of Carter School’s Conflict Analysis and Resolution Program at George Mason University Korea, and a Co-director at the Peace and Conflict Studies Center Asia (PACSC Asia). She is an expert in peacebuilding, transitional justice, dealing with the past, education in post-conflict settings, and atrocities prevention. 

Dr. Simmons teaches classes on conflict theory, narrative, media, discourse and conflict, human rights, quantitative and qualitative methodology, global conflict, and critical theory. His current work on peace and conflict resolution combines Weberian institutional theory, with critical social philosophy, bringing in insights from semiotics and narrative analysis.

Dr. Irvin-Erickson is a political theorist and diplomatic historian working in the area of international criminal law, global justice, and genocide prevention.

Dr. Rothbart specializes in a wide range of topics: prevention of mass violence, ethnic conflicts, power and conflict, the ethics of conflict resolution, civilians in war and the psycho-politics of conflict.

Dr. Schoeny teaches courses in research and evaluation methods, practice skills and the integration of inter-disciplinary approaches to conflict analysis and resolution.

Dr. Wilson’s is currently working to improve foreign policy, diplomacy, and conflict resolution efforts around the world. He is also working to create and enhance local community, governmental and international capacity to peacefully mediate, transform, and resolve culturally diverse and historically deep-rooted and protracted conflicts at all levels of society.

Agnieszka Paczynska’s research focuses on the relationship between economic and political change and conflict, development and conflict, security-development nexus, post-conflict reconstruction policies, the relationship between globalization processes and local conflicts, and conflict resolution pedagogy.