Lisa Blaydes is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is the author of Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018). She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.

Biography: Dr. Emrah Karakuş is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research examines affective politics, migration, and the lived experiences of queer and trans communities in conflict zones across the Middle East, with a particular focus on Kurdish and Turkish contexts. He is currently an LSE Fellow in Gender and Human Rights at the London School of Economics and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies.

What if the world's peacemaking system is flawed in fundamental ways? There are more armed conflicts today than at any point since the end of World War II. Civil wars, especially, have proliferated since 2011. In so many regions of the world, peacemaking initiatives are not succeeding.

New research conducted by the speaker suggests that mediation efforts are failing not just because conflicts are so difficult to resolve and the international environment is so challenging—but also due to flaws and deficiencies in the field’s systems, structures, policies, and practices.