Conditions Necessary for Peace
Ellen Laipson, Carly Beckerman, Jacob Eriksson, Martyn Frampton and Sultan Barakat (Chair)

• Saturday 9 June 2018, 1.30PM to 3.00pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
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• Ron Cooke Hub, University of York (map|getting to campus)
• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

More than 20 years on from the Oslo Accords, we ask how peace can be achieved in the Middle East.

Ellen Laipson, Director of the International Security Program at George Mason University, a Middle East expert with 25 years government experience, presents the keynote speech.

Next speakers, including Martyn Frampton, author of The Muslim Brotherhood and the West, Carly Beckerman of Durham University and Jacob Eriksson of the University of York, explore contemporary issues affecting peace in the Middle East, and how and if peace can ever be achieved.

The session is chaired by Sultan Barakat, Founding Director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and Professor in Politics and Post-war Recovery Studies at the University of York.

Presented in collaboration with The Morrell Centre for Toleration which is generously supported by the C and JB Morrell Trust. 

About the speakers

Dr Carly Beckerman is Assistant Professor in the International Relations of the Middle East in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University where she has worked since 2014. She received her PhD in International Studies from the University of Birmingham in 2013 and spent one year as a Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science while lecturing in Foreign Policy Analysis at City University, London.

Carly’s research is situated between the fields of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and Conflict Resolution, with a particular focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her special areas of interest are foreign policy analysis, conflict resolution/third party mediation, Israel-Palestine, and British Empire in the Middle East. Her first book Unexpected State: British Politics and the Creation of Israel is coming out with Indiana University Press in 2018. 

Dr Jacob Eriksson is the Al Tajir Lecturer in Post-war Recovery Studies in the Department of Politics at the University of York. He holds BA and MA degrees from the War Studies Department at King's College London, and a PhD from the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS). Jacob’s research focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, conflict resolution and mediation, and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict.

He has contributed to edited collections in these fields, and his first book, Small-state Mediation in International Conflicts: Diplomacy and Negotiation in Israel-Palestine was published by IB Tauris in 2015. His broader research interests include Middle Eastern politics and security, particularly in the context of post-war recovery and peace building. He is the co-editor, together with Dr Ahmed Khaleel, of Iraq after ISIS: governance, transitional justice, and post-war recovery, due to be published by Palgrave in autumn 2018.

Dr Martyn Frampton is Reader in Modern History at Queen Mary University of London and author of The Muslim Brotherhood and the West, the first comprehensive history of the relationship between the world’s largest Islamist movement and the Western powers that have dominated the Middle East for the past century: Britain and the United States.

Formerly a Research Fellow at Peterhouse in Cambridge, Martyn is also an expert on the Irish republican movement. His books include The Long March: The Political Strategy of Sinn Féin, 1981–2007; Talking to Terrorists: Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country, and Legion of the Rearguard: Dissident Irish Republicanism. 

Ellen Laipson is the Director of the Center for Security Policy Studies and the Director of the International Security program at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University (GMU). She joined GMU after a distinguished 25 year career in government and as President and CEO of the Stimson Center (2002-2015).

She serves on a number of academic and other non-governmental boards related to international security and diplomacy and is a weekly columnist for World Politics Review. Her last post in government was Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council (1997-2002). She also served on the State Department’s policy planning staff, the National Security Council staff, and the Congressional Research Service. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she serves on the Advisory Councils of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. She served on the board of the Asia Foundation (2003-2015). She was a member of the CIA External Advisory Panel from 2006-2009, President Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board from 2009-2013, and on the Secretary of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board 2011-2014.

Sultan Barakat is the Founding Director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and Professor in Politics and Post-war Recovery Studies at the University of York.  Previously he served as Director of Research at the Brookings Doha Centre. At the University of York he founded and led the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit​ between 1993 and 2014.​

His most recent book is Understanding Influence: The Use of Statebuilding Research in British Policy (Ashgate, 2014). Sultan has over 25 years of professional experience working on issues of conflict management, humanitarian response, and post-conflict recovery and transition. He is regularly engaged in providing guidance as a Senior Adviser and Consultant to the United Nations, the World Bank, European Union, DFID, ILO, IFRC and a variety of governments and international non-governmental organisations including CARE and Oxfam.  He has led major evaluations and programming initiatives in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Egypt, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Palestine, Philippines (Mindanao), Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan (Darfur), Syria, Uganda (Moyo and Adjumani) and Yemen. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute in London. He is a member of the joint Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) Commissioning Panel for research on poverty reduction. Barakat was one of the founding Expert Panel Members of the Global Peace Index where he served between 2008 and 2014.

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