2005-06 Master's Students


Benjamin Bolger

Benjamin Bolger has undertaken graduate studies in politics, sociology, education, and urban planning. He has extensive experience teaching in diverse and disadvantaged communities, as well as researching social conflict and educational inequalities in the United States. Benjamin has worked to promote socially responsible investing and shareholder responsibility initiatives. Benjamin’s public service includes affiliations with Common Cause and the White House Press Office during the Clinton Administration.  For his Field Project, Ben was working in collaboration with the Sustainable Endowments Institute (SEI) undertaking research on a project proposal to use shareholder responsibility initiatives to decrease child soldiering and aid demobilized child soldier refugees.

Clementine Lue Clark

Clementine Lue Clark is a native Jamaican. She’s worked in various capacities for the international NGO Initiatives of Change, in the US, France, Switzerland, and Uganda on a variety of initiatives, including the African Great Lakes Initiative for Peace, Initiative Dialogue, Agenda for Reconciliation, and Women: Creators of Peace. She's a graduate of the Caux Scholars Program (Switzerland).

While completing her Masters field project, Clementine looked at the role of Liberia's faith community in promoting good governance, she helped the Liberian Council of Churches start a Good Governance Commission and evaluated a USAID funded project for the international NGO Search for Common Ground. Her research interests include youth and gender issues, and interfaith dialogue in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Yotam Gonen

Yotam Gonen is a freelance journalist from Israel and media strategy consultant for social change organizations. Yotam writes about social justice and culture for the Nana web portal and for Time Out magazine, and has done research and script writing for documentary films focusing on human rights and minorities. Yotam is also an activist and a founding member of Kvisa Shchora, and was active in different joint Palestinian-Israeli peace initiatives, such as the peace camp in the Palestinian village of Mas’ha.

Yotam was working in Tel Aviv with the Conflict Transformation and Management Center of the  New Israel Fund for his Field Project. He designed a project aimed at people from social change organizations in Israel, building their capacity for conflict transformation and resolution,  and training them in creating change in ways that will not enhance conflict.

Sukhrob Khalilov

Sukhrob Khalilov is from Uzbekistan. His research and expertise area is the US policy in Central Asia with a focus on democratization and human rights. He has participated in various research projects on minority issues in Uzbekistan.

For Sukhrob's Field Project, he worked with Uzbekistani political parties and NGO’s investigating the conflict-prevention challenges facing Uzbekistan in the development of democracy.

Jennifer Ludwig

Jennifer Ludwig has worked in the past for the Abraham Fund Initiatives in Israel on the development of Arab-Israeli coexistence projects. She has also worked at the Israel Religious Action Centre, in Jerusalem, for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in Washington DC, and for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan(ACLU).

Jennifer was working with the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities in Belfast, Northern Ireland for her Field Project. Her specific role was to develop a framework to enhance the implementation and evaluation ability of agencies within the criminal justice sector to mainstream a government Racial Equality Strategy.

Anya Maria Mayans

Anya Maria Mayans' background in psychology and research interests in conflict and trauma have taken her to Argentina and to Uruguay. In Uruguay, she conducted interviews with survivors of political torture, as part of her research on the aftermath of the military dictatorship under which her family suffered. She was most recently working in Oaxaca, Mexico developing fundraising materials and a website for an NGO that serves 25 indigenous communities around the State. Anya Maria's career includes consulting for Governor Bill Richardson's Moving America Forward initiative in New Mexico during the 2004 Presidential election. This program focused on voter education with Latino and Native American voters. In 1999, Anya Maria was one of 25 individuals selected internationally as a New York City Urban Fellow. From 2000 to 2003, her work in the Technical Assistance department at The After School Corporation — a George Soros initiative — involved developing creative programming for after-school programs in New York City. Anya Maria organized cultural sensitivity trainings with Muslims Against Terrorism and the Coney Island Project for Pakistani immigrants shortly after 9/11. She has also volunteered with the Solace Program for Survivors of Torture and for other NGOs in New York City.

Anya worked in collaborations with the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT) in Denmark during her Field Project. Her research was focused upon victims who resettle in Denmark and the impact of social stigma (actual or perceived) in the Western host country on the recovery process of refugees with a history of trauma.

Angela Nicoara

Angela Nicoara worked as reporter, camerawoman, editor, director, and trainer in conflict and post-conflict areas. Since 2003, she has served as Country Director for Internews in Rwanda and Tanzania. She has produced numerous films about justice and reconciliation that have been screened to local communities, in prisons, and at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Raised in Communist Romania, Nicoara was trained as an engineer and helped set up one of Romania's first 'free radio' newsrooms.

For Angela's Field Project, she assessed a cross-border broadcast media project run by the East West Institute in Gjilan, Presevo, Kumanovo, Trgoviste (GPKT) to see how media standards in post-conflict Kosovo have been affected by social, cultural and economic factors.

Olajide Olagunju

Olajide Olagunju is from Nigeria, where he has been working on the establishment of the Warri Mediation Centre. He has also worked with several state government Ministries of Justice to successfully set up mediation centres. He is one of the founding members of Corporate Mediators and of the Commonwealth Mediation Association, of which he is the Secretary. He has also served on the Committee of the Lagos State Government Citizens Mediation Centre, on the National Project on Alternative Dispute Resolution of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, and was Secretary for the Consortium for Reconciliation in Nigeria. He founded World Peace Institute in 1994 to help train leaders from various sectors and in various countries on peacebuilding. He has written several books on conflict resolution including Commercial Mediation, which has been on the Nigerian Law School reading list since 1998.

Olajide documented the challenges faced by the Nigerian government and NGO agencies in addressing the problems of IDP’s arising from the violent Hausa-Kataf ethno-religious conflict in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, in 2000 for his Field Project. The report includes recommendations for the better management of IDP problems in Nigeria.

Shelly Ross

Shelly Ross has over 10 years experience of training, managing and fund raising in the fields of conflict prevention, peace building and economic development. She has worked as development and research manager for FEWER — the Forum on Early Warning and Early Response (UK), as a consultant to the Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific (Fiji), and with the Peace Corps in Benin in West Africa.

For Shelly's Field Project, she was working with the regional offices of the EastWest Institute — Center for Border Cooperation in  Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia. She investigated to what extent planning, coordination and cooperation (or the lack thereof) has affected conflict transformation within the GPKT (Gjilan/Gnjilane, Presevo, Kumanovo, Trgoviste) microregion of Kosovo/Serbia/Macedonia.

Amit Sa’ar

Amit Sa’ar is from Israel and is on study leave from the Israeli Defense Force where he is responsible for producing comprehensive research and analysis papers for policy purposes on issues of peace and security in the Middle East.

Amit focused on how NGO’s in Israel can more effectively create sufficient political will to address coexistence issues between Jewish and Arab citizens within Israel for his Field Project.

Sitoramo Safolova

Sitoramo Safolova is from Tajikistan where she is the Director of Elena, an NGO dedicated to involving Tajik women into social activities and the processes of democratization. Previously she worked for Oxfam, Great Britain in Tajikistan, where she was the Project Officer on gender issues. Sitoramo has also worked as a Coordinator of women’s programs for the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation in Tajikistan, and she worked within OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission/Parliamentary Election in Tajikistan in 2005 as an Assistant to Legal/Gender Analyst.

For her Field Project, Sitora looked at the realities and challenges of social services providers working on the prevention of domestic violence in the Russian immigrant community in the United States.