ICfC - About Us

About Us.

Hillel Levine, President and Founder

Dr. Hillel Levine has written numerous books and articles on ethnic violence and conflict resolution, using an approach that is both scholarly and empathetic. His use of evocative narrative and moving life-histories makes his work engaging to non-specialists and popular audiences while remaining influential among academics and policy analysts. His research has provided the basis for an Oscar winning documentary and two of his books are being made into documentaries and a feature-length dramatization.

Hillel is a popular lecturer, guest columnist in newspapers, and makes frequent radio and television appearances. The ICfC is an extension of his life's work into the world of politics and geopolitical peace.

Hillel, in addition to his international work with the ICfC, is also a professor of Sociology and Religion at Boston University, where he has been teaching and researching since 1981. Email.

David Steele, Senior Associate

Dr. David Steele works with religious, political, and other community actors to effectively facilitate social transformation within situations of conflict in the Balkans, the Middle East, and South Asia. He has developed conflict assessment procedures, facilitated dialogue and problem solving processes, led training workshops in relationship building and conflict resolution, developed cooperative inter-ethnic/sectarian projects in post-conflict reconstruction, established indigenous peacebuilding NGOs, and made oral and written presentations on religion and conflict. Highlights from his experience include: brainstorming and back channel communication between governments during the Kosovo War, training workshops related to the Final Status Talks in Kosovo and for provincial leaders in Iraq, recommendations for reconciliation in Iraq prepared for the US Institute of Peace, a peacebuilding vision and strategy paper for the African Catholic Bishops Conference, and an essay on engaging with religion in conflict situations for top level international negotiators at the Oslo Forum. Previously, Dr. Steele has worked as a program manager at Mercy Corps, as program manager, then interim executive director, at Conflict Management Group in Cambridge, MA, and as a fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, DC. Dr. Steele has a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and is the author of numerous publications.

Poonam Barua, Associate

Poonam Barua is whole-time Director of Public Affairs Management (PAMASIA), based in New Delhi, India. She is also concurrently Regional Director - India, The Conference Board, New York, in which capacity she is also Representative for The Board's highly successful "Human Resources Council -- India" which she launched three years ago, and the Board's "Corporate Governance Research Center- India" launched in 2001.

Ms. Barua has been awarded the Ford Fellowship for 2003 by the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), John Hopkins University, Washington D.C., in recognition of her extensive research work on South Asian economic and business cooperation. Ms. Barua has been Chief Program Advisor with the United States Information Service in New Delhi, where she spent over a decade managing the senior staff, resources, and programs on U.S. foreign policy issues and international relations. She holds a Masters Degree in Economics from the prestigious Delhi School of Economics (Delhi University), is also a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar, Austria.

BOSTON OFFICE

Dagmar Kusa, Senior Fellow/Program Coordinator

Dasha received her MA degree in political science from Comenius University in her native Slovakia. She is pursuing her PhD at Boston University and at the Institute of Ethnology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She started off in the field of human rights at the Slovak Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, dealing mostly with issues relating to Roma, Hungarian, and Ruthenian minorities in Slovakia. Her thesis focuses on the role of historic memory in perpetuation of ethnic conflict and tensions in Central European politics today. She writes for various international policy journals. Dasha joined ICfC in January 2005 as the first permanent fellow and is now in charge of coordinating project activities and trainings. She has led workshops in India, Cambodia, Europe, and the U.S. Email.

Phil Gamaghelyan, ICfC Fellow

Phil is a native of Armenia. He is a lecturer at Tufts Experimental College and the founder and co-director of the Imagine Program for Conflict Transformation. Phil has an MA degree in Conflict Resolution from Brandeis University and training and experience as a conflict group facilitator. Prior to joining ICfC he has worked as a Co-Coordinator of Delegation Leaders Program at Seeds of Peace and as a consultant with Turkish - Armenian Dialogues, the Inter-Communal Violence and Reconciliation project - a joint initiative of The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is also the founder and co-facilitator of a Turkish/Armenian Dialogue Group that unites graduate students from Boston-area universities.
Phil's research is focused on identity-based conflicts. He is the author of the article "Intractability of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: a myth or a reality?' in Peace and Conflict Monitor, July 2005. Email

Adam Saltsman, ICfC Fellow

Adam holds a BA from Colby College where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with honors in his cultural anthropology major and is currently pursuing his PhD in sociology at Boston College. His research interests include post-conflict struggles over cultural space and the distortion of cultural memory, a topic for which he conducted field work in Vietnam in 2004. Prior to his Fellowship with the ICfC, Adam spent time interning with Human Rights Watch where he helped lead a youth human rights advocacy program. He also worked with victims of human trafficking and political refugees being resettled in Austin, Texas. From January 2006 - July 2007, Adam served as a Fellow for the ICfC in Cambodia, bringing together former Khmer Rouge cadre members and survivors from the Cambodian genocide to develop conciliatory dialogue strategies. Email.

Dina Rezvani, ICfC Intern

Dina Rezvani is a senior at Tufts University studying International Relations, with a focus on Foreign Policy Analysis, and Communications and Media Studies. She is of Persian descent and speaks Farsi and Spanish. She spent 6 months studying in Sevilla, Spain and has experience working in a range of fields from broadcast television and production to politics and issue advocacy.

CAMBODIA OFFICE IN PHNOM PENH

Vichhra Muoyly, ICfC Facilitator

Vichhra Muoyly holds a law degree from the Royal University of Law and Economics in Cambodia. She worked for over a year as a research assistant at the Open Society Justice Initiative investigating how much people in remote Cambodia knew about the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and idenitfying strategies for successful outreach. She spent a year training people from rural communities about law with a local NGO The Khmer Institute of Democracy, and participated in the production and distribution of a documentary film called “Seeing Proof” that discusses the young generation of Cambodians who have difficulty believing or understanding their parents’ stories from the Khmer Rouge time. Vichhra joined ICfC in March 2007 as a facilitator. Through working with ICfC as a member of Cambodia’s new generation, Vichhra hopes to further comprehend her own family history and her country’s history, and to help other young Cambodians to do the same.

Shanti Sattler, ICfC Fellow

Shanti Sattler of Eureka, California graduated from the International Relations and Peace & Justice Studies at Tufts University. For the past six years she has served as an advisor to several national service organizations and is the former member and current co-chair of Youth Service America's National Youth Advisory Council. During the summer of 2005, she worked with the renowned author, psychologist and former commissioner on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Dr. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela in Cape Town, South Africa, assisting with her research on perpetrator remorse and reintegration into post-apartheid society. In 2006, she served on the international student planning committee of the second Women as Global Leaders conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. She wrote a senior honors thesis in peace and justice studies on war-affected youth in Northern Uganda and recently returned from a research trip to Gulu. Shanti joined the International Center for Conciliation in January of 2006. She is working for the Center in Phnom Penh office, Cambodia, since July 2007. Email

Kim Vuth, Program Manager

Kim Vuth holds two degrees - in Human Resource Management and in English Literature. He is a graduate of a 9-month leadership training program "Action for Life", organized by the Initiatives of Change International. He taught English at a public school for two years. He is one of the founders of the Initiatives of Change Association-Cambodia, where he served as its president for 4 years. Among the projects that he ran at this association was the Cambodia-Vietnam Dialogue, which he continues to work with through the ICfC. Vuth has attended local and overseas trainings related to peace building. He is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Peace Studies and completed a course in Applied Conflict Transformation. Vuth joined ICfC in March 2007. Vuth believes that through his work with the ICfC he will be able to serve as an effective peace builder in his country and beyond. Email.

ICfC FELLOWS

David Baharvar, ICfC Fellow

A graduate of Harvard Law School where he has researched and trained in negotiation and mediation, David is excited to be part of the Institute. In addition to mediating legal disputes of various sorts over several years with the Harvard Mediation Program, David has worked abroad as a researcher at the International Labour Organization's Programme on Social Dialogue in Geneva, and at Defense for Children International in Cochabamba, Bolivia. David wrote an article entitled Beyond Mediation: The Integral Role of Non-Governmental Approaches to Resolving Protracted Ethnic Conflicts in Lesser Developed Countries, published in the Online Journal Of Peace & Conflict Resolution. David also has a new publication: "Gaps, Conflicts and Ambiguities in Facilitative, Problem-Solving Mediation: What can we learn from other approaches?" in the May 2005 newsletter of the New England Association for Conflict Resolution. Email.

Nir Eisikovits, ICfC Fellow

Dr. Eisikovits, an Israeli attorney, earned his PhD in legal and political philosophy from Boston University in 2005. His research focuses on the moral and political dilemmas arising in post-conflict and transitional settings. Some of the questions he is interested in concern the possibility of sympathy between enemies, the feasibility of forgiveness in politics, and the comparative benefits of truth commissions and war crime tribunals for societies emerging from prolonged conflict. Recent scholarly publications include: “"Forget Forgiveness: On The Benefits of Sympathy for Political Reconciliation" (Theoria, 105), "I am the Enemy you Killed my Friend: Rethinking The Legitimacy of Truth Commissions"(Metaphilosophy, 37 ) and "Moral Luck and the Criminal Law" (in Law and Social Justice, Cambell et al., eds., MIT, 2005). He has also written numerous op-ed pieces on the Middle East conflict for American publications such as The Miami Herald, The Forward and In These Times. Before coming to Boston, he worked at the Tel Aviv District Attorney's office. In addition to his work for the ICfC, Nir is an Assistant Professor of philosophy at Suffolk University. Email.

Brigitt Keller, ICfC Fellow

Brigitt Keller holds a law degree from Fribourg University Law School in her native Switzerland and an LLM in American Law from Boston University. Originally trained as an educator, she worked for many years in an after school program with children of Turkish immigrants. Prior to her law experience, Brigitt counseled victims of domestic violence and was instrumental in founding the Swiss National Council of Women’s Shelters. For many years, she organized and taught workshops on the prevention of domestic violence, with a special focus on the prevention of sexual abuse of children. After completing her LLM at Boston University, Brigitt began working for the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP) on a Best Practices Manual, where she currently serves as the Executive Director. Email.

Jina Moore, ICfC Fellow

Jina brings to the Institute a background in historic memory studies and experience in reconciliation workshops between descendants of the perpetrators and the victims of ethnic conflict. She studied Holocaust history and literature in Boston University's University Professors Program, during which she was named a U.S. Truman Scholar. She spent her first year out of college in AmeriCorps and then worked at Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Jina is now pursuing a dual Masters degree in International Affairs and Journalism at Columbia University. She spent a month in Rwanda recently, researching and writing about transitional justice and reconstruction of post-genocide Rwanda. Jina's dream is to start an organization to equip local journalists in countries undercovered by the American press with advanced storytelling skills and help them sell their work to major international markets. From February 2008, Jina will be working in Kigali on a book on life and conciliation efforts in post-conflict Rwanda .