Elizabeth Cousens

Elizabeth Cousens joined the International Peace Academy (IPA) as Vice President in January 2005. For the previous three years, she directed the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, a small research organization based at the Social Science Research Council that works closely with the United Nations and specializes in country and regional analysis of crisis situations. Prior to that, Dr. Cousens served with the Office of the United Nations Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, based in Gaza, where she headed the Office’s Donor Co-ordination Unit and covered issues including Palestinian institutional reform, strategic coordination of development and humanitarian assistance and refugee aspects of final status negotiations. Earlier, Dr. Cousens had also been based at IPA, where she served as Director of Research between 1997 and 2000. Her own research focused on comparative peace processes and international implementation of peace agreements in civil wars, resulting in several publications including Ending Civil Wars with Stephen John Stedman and Donald Rothchild. Dr. Cousens was also a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University in 1990-94. Dr. Cousens has lectured widely on multilateral peace operations, the United Nations and developments in the former Yugoslavia. Her additional research interests include the micro-foundations of civil conflict and cooperation; nation-building, state formation and state-society relations in war-torn societies; strategic coordination of international assistance; and evaluation criteria for international peacebuilding. Dr. Cousens received her D.Phil. and M.Phil. in International Relations from the University of Oxford, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar from Washington State. She received her B.A. in History from the University of Puget Sound and Princeton University."


 * Former Advisory Committee, AIDS, Security and Conflict Initiative