Lieutenant-General the Honourable Roméo A. DallaireO.C.,C.M.M.,G.O.Q.,M.S.C.,C.D., (Ret'd)
Appointed to the Senate of Canada in March of 2005, LGen. Dallaire served with the Canadian Forces for more than three decades before retiring as a Lieutenant-General. In 1993, he took command of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), a post in which he and his limited number of troops witnessed the killing of more than 800,000 Rwandans in a period of little more than three months. Since his retirement, Senator Dallaire has worked to bring an understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to the wider Canadian public. He served as a Special Advisor to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) on matters relating to war-affected children around the world and to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade on the non-proliferation of small arms.
He has been named Fellow of the Ryerson Polytechnic University and has received honorary doctorates from numerous Canadian universities. In 2002, LGen Dallaire was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 2005 was presented with the United Nations Association of Canada's Pearson Peace Medal. LGen Dallaire spent the 2004-2005 academic year as a Fellow at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy where he directed in-depth research into the problem of Child Soldiers.
Shelly Whitman, PhDDirector, Child Soldiers Initiative
Deputy Director, Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University
Shelly took up the post of Deputy Director at the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies in August 2008. Prior to this she has had an academic career teaching in International Development Studies and Political Science at Dalhousie University, Saint Mary's University and the University of Botswana. Her research interests have been broadly focused on issues related to peace, development and human security. More specifically she has conducted research on small arms and light weapons in Southern Africa, gender and conflict, children and conflict, the international criminal court, the Great Lakes region and peace and reconciliation efforts in post-conflict societies.
From 2000-2002, Shelly worked as Head of Research on the inter-Congolese dialogue, under the direction of Former Botswana President, Sir Ketumile Masire. Previous to this post, she was a Research Consultant at UNICEF, NY and worked under the direction of Ambassador Stephen Lewis on the OAU Rwanda Genocide Report. Shelly recently introduced a new course on Children and Armed Conflict at Dalhousie University and took on the additional role of Director of the Child Soldiers Initiative in November 2009.
Tanya ZayedProject Coordinator, Office of the Honorable Roméo A. Dallaire, LGen (Ret'd)
Tanya Zayed recently completed a Master's degree in Conflict Studies at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. She also holds an undergraduate degree in Criminology from the University of Ottawa. Prior to joining the Child Soldiers Initiative, Tanya was very active in furthering the cause of many community and international organizations such as the Control Arms campaign, War Child, Gulu Walk and most recently Save the Children Colombia, among others. She has recently completed an internship with save the Children Canada in Bogota Colombia where she worked on the Rewrite the Future campaign for Education in Emergencies. Tanya has also worked in Cochabamba, Bolivia in various programs dealing with at-risk children and youth.
Kirsten JohnsonMD, MPH
Dr. Johnson is an attending staff in the Emergency Department of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal and is faculty in the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University. She is affiliated faculty at the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University and at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University in Boston. Dr. Johnson is Co-Director of the Humanitarian Studies Initiative for Residents at McGill University: a program designed to train medical residents as professionals in humanitarian response. She is also on the Steering Committee of the Child Soldiers Initiative. Dr. Johnson has extensive experience in humanitarian relief and development, having worked and conducted research with 16 organizations in over 30 countries. She co-authored a report on the destruction of livelihoods by the Government of Sudan as a means to commit genocide and presented this work to both the United Nations Special Representative for the Secretary General on Genocide Prevention and the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Dr. Johnson’s current research has focused on mental health of populations affected by conflict, Sexual Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) and child combatants.
Ann Livingston, PhDVice President, Research and Education, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre
A graduate of Anderson University, Indiana, Dr. Ann Livingstone earned her Masters at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She did post-graduate studies at Oxford University (UK) and was awarded her Ph.D. from University of Keele (UK).
With a strong interest in the role that middle power States have played in peace operations, Dr. Livingstone has been drawn to work in an environment where the concepts of peace and conflict are approached from a constructivist perspective. At the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre (PPC), she has the opportunity to research and work with the civilian, military, and police personnel who play a critical role in the field of peace operations.
Sandra D. MeloneExecutive Director, Search for Common Ground (SFCG)
Sandra has been at SFCG since April 1995, serving as Executive Director since August 2004. Previously, she established SFCG's Brussels headquarters and founded the organization's Women's Peace Centre in Burundi. She has worked in human rights advocacy with Amnesty International and in international education. Sandra has given numerous workshops in conflict transformation, consensus building, negotiation, and cross-cultural communication, and presentations at international gatherings on conflict prevention and resolution issues.
Sibylle Artz, PhDFull Professor, School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria
Sibylle's community-based collaborative research focuses on aggression and violence and family homelessness, and girls' use of violence. She has published more than fifty refereed articles and written two books. In 1998, Sibylle was chosen as Academic of the Year by the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia, and in 2004, received the Award of Distinction for Research from the McCreary Youth Foundation of Vancouver. In 2008, she received a Leadership Victoria Award for her community-based violence prevention research.
Marie Hoskins, PhDFull Professor and Graduate Advisor, School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria
The recipient of several Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Awards, Marie has conducted in-depth research on workplace conflict, adolescents and disordered eating, and the use of crystal meta amphetamines among adolescent girls. Marie's research also examines when differences cannot seemingly be reconciled, particularly in highly conflicted societies. She has written about difficulties in educational environments and in practice settings where there are diverse world views and perspectives.
Marie teaches courses on social construction of knowledge, applied human change theories, and qualitative inquiries and has authored and co-authored numerous articles published in journals such as Constructivist Psychology, International Women's Quarterly, the Child and Youth Care Forum, Mediation Quarterly, and Qualitative Inquiry, and co-edited a book entitled, Working Relationally with Girls:Complex Lives/Complex Identities. She has been on the editorial boards of the Canadian Journal of Counselling and Constructivism and the Human Sciences.
Tom Faulkner, PhDAssociate Professor of Church & Society, Faculty of Theology and Director of the Ridd Institute for Religion & Global Policy at The University of Winnipeg.
Tom holds a PhD from The University of Chicago, has extensive experience as an academic editor, and is the author of articles on "Christianity" and "Protestantism" in The Canadian Encyclopedia. His research program currently includes combat ethics, academic freedom and spiritual care in disaster management.
