Rob Grace

Adjunct Lecturer

Departments/Programs

The Heller School for Social Policy and Management

Degrees

New York University, M.A.
Vassar College, B.A.

Expertise

The Politics of Humanitarian Action, Humanitarian Negotiation, Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination, International Fact-Finding

Profile

Rob Grace has a decade of experience leading and contributing to policy-oriented research projects and capacity building efforts related to various dimensions of international humanitarian response. He is a researcher and affiliated fellow at the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies (CHRHS), based at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, where he undertakes research on humanitarian-military relations. During the 2019-2020 academic year, he was a USIP-Minerva Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace and a Graduate Research Fellow at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Previously, he was a researcher at Harvard University, first at the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) and then at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), where he led research projects on humanitarian negotiation and international fact-finding. He is the co-editor of the HPCR Practitioner’s Handbook on Monitoring, Reporting, and Fact-finding, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. His work has also been published by the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, Journal of Conflict & Security Law, World Health & Population, Conflict and Health, Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies, Negotiation Journal, the European Society of International Law, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection, the Foreign Policy Association, and Foreign Policy in Focus. He is a doctoral candidate in political science at Brown University, where he is working on a dissertation analyzing humanitarian access negotiations.

Awards and Honors

Annual Prize, Best Article of 2020, Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies (2021)

Summer Research Fellow, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School (2020)

Graduate Research Fellow, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School (2019 - 2020)

USIP-Minerva Peace Scholar, United States Institute of Peace (2019 - 2020)

Scholarship

Brooks, Julia and Grace, Rob. "Confronting Humanitarian Insecurity: The Law and Politics of Responding to Attacks against Aid Workers." Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 2. 1 (2020): 11-20.

Grace, Rob and Card, Brittany. Re-assessing the Civil-Military Coordination Service of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: Findings and Recommendations Based on Partners’ Perspectives. Providence, RI Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies: 2020.

Grace, Rob. "Humanitarian Negotiation with Parties to Armed Conflict: The Role of Laws and Principles in the Discourse." Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies 11. 1 (2020): 68-96.

Grace, Rob. "The Humanitarian as Negotiator: Cultivating Capacity Across the Aid Sector." Negotiation Journal 36. 1 (2020): 13-41.

Grace, Rob. Surmounting Contemporary Challenges to Humanitarian-Military Relations. Providence, RI Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies: 2020.

Grace, Rob and Bruderlein, Claude. HPCR Practitioner’s Handbook on Monitoring, Reporting, and Fact-Finding: Investigating International Law Violations. 1 ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press:, 2017.

Grace, Rob. "Lessons From Two Regional Missions: Fact-Finding in Georgia and South Sudan." Commissions of Inquiry: Problems and Prospects. 1 ed. vol. 1 Ed. Christian Henderson. Portland: Hart, 2017. 65-88.

Grace, Rob and Bruderlein, Claude. "“Developing Norms of Professional Practice in the Domain of Monitoring, Reporting, and Fact-finding." The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-finding. 1 ed. vol. 1 Ed. Philip Alston and Sarah Knuckey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 525-544.

Grace, Rob. "From Design to Implementation: The Interpretation of Fact-finding Mandates." Journal of Conflict and Security Law 20. 1 (2015): 27-60.