Northern Ireland Community Relations Council - About Us - News - Seminar - The Impact of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

13 September 2011

Dr David Backer United States Institute for Peace (USIP) 16 September, 11.00AM - 1.00PM Room 82D24, University of Ulster, Belfast Campus, York Street

David Backer joined the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in July 2010 as a Program Officer in the Grant
Program. In this capacity, he shares responsibility for administering the Institute's Annual Grant Competitionand oversees one of its set of Priority Grant Competitions.

Dr. Backer is also an original member of the Board of Editors of the International Journal of Transitional Justice, a founding Co--‐Director of the Constituency--‐Level Elections Archive, and a Research Associate of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (South Africa). From 2005--2010, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at the College of William & Mary and spent time as a Post--‐Doctoral Scholar at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (2005--06), a Visiting Scholar in Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (2009--‐10). Previously, he taught at the University of Michigan.

A specialist on the comparative study of transitional justice processes, he is conducting ongoing research projects, using original primary data highlighted by extensive surveys, focusing on victims of past abuses in Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa. Other work examines subjects such as the dynamics of political violence and ethnic conflict, elite politics in closed regimes, and the role of nongovernmental organizations in authoritarian settings. He has published articles and book reviews in theJournal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, the International Journal of Transitional Justice, International Politics, Democratization, the Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Global Studies Review, and Complexity, as well as contributions to several edited volumes and conference proceedings and a number of working papers. His research has received external funding from USIP as well as the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, and the American Political Science Association.

Dr. Backer graduated with a B.A. summa cum laude, as an interdisciplinary studies and economics double major, from Amherst College (1990). Subsequently, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), completing coursework for a MSocSci in South African & African Politics (1994). He was later awarded an M.A. (1998) and Ph.D. (2004) in political science from the University of Michigan, which he attended on a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship.

This seminar is the inaugural event of IPAC (Inter--Institute Peace and Conflict Cluster), jointly sponsored by TJI and INCORE.

RSVP: Elaine McCoubrey: e.mccoubrey@ulster.ac.uk