AuthorProfiles

Colonel Michael Morrison retired from the Canadian Forces in the summer of 2001 with 37 years of military service. He is currently an external faculty member of the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre with recent experience facilitating on the Peacekeeping Negotiation and Legal Framework of Modern Peacekeeping courses, and working as a Directing Staff member on a major peacekeeping exercise conducted for the German/Netherlands Corps Headquarters. He has also worked as an instructor on the Enhanced International Peace-keeping Capabilities Instructor Course conducted at the Center for Civil-Military Relations, US Navy Post-Graduate School Monterey, California, USA.

Dr. Elizabeth Blalock was raised in New York City, and completed her medical school training in neurology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She practiced neurology at Kaiser Permanente in southern California until her retirement in August 2003. Dr. Blalock is a graduate of the 2002 Honolulu Health Emergencies in Large Populations Course. She took a sabbatical for her work in Uganda. Since retiring, Dr. Blalock has volunteered her services in community clinics and is looking forward to additional volunteer activity overseas. She currently resides in Honolulu, HI.

Dr. Thomas Ditzler is Director of Research for the Department of Psychiatry at Tripler Army Medical Center and an member of the adjunct faculty at the COE. He has completed many humanitarian aid training missions around the world, and consults frequently on terrorism issues. He is a contributing author of the recently released Understanding Terrorism: Psychosocial Roots, Consequences and Interventions (Moghaddam & Marsella, Eds). Dr. Ditzler also serves as a UN Peacekeeping Operations Trainer and is a Senior Fellow at CTR International.

Major Richard De Leon is the Clinical Director of the Tri-Service Addiction Recovery Facility (TRISARF), Department of Psychiatry at Tripler Army Medical Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. He is an Air Force Biomedical Services Corps Officer. Maj De Leon is a graduate of the Air Force Air Command and Staff College and a Senior Fellow at CTR International.

Roy Thomas is a former Senior UN Military Observer, Sector Sarajevo, 1993/94 plus UN tours in Cyprus, the Golan, South Lebanon, Afghanistan, Macedonia, Bosnia and Haiti. His last military appointment before retirement was as Chief Instructor of the Canadian Forces' Peace Support Training Centre in Kington. He was part of the Center of Excellence's team for 2000/2001 peace operations training sessions held in Thailand.

Brien Hallett's research and teaching interests are Peace Studies, Humanitarian Assistance, International Humanitarian Law, and the Congressional War Powers. He manages a graduate-level certificate program in Disaster Management, Humanitarian Assistance and Peacekeeping. Hallett’s most recent book is "The Lost Art of Declaring War" (University of Illinois Press, 1998), and his most recent journal article, with Ralph Summy, is "Detooling the Language of the Masters' House" (Peace & Change April 2003) in which he uses an analysis of language to suggest new strategies for nuclear abolition.

Andjela Jurisic was born in 1973 in Germany. She studied European Integration at the University of Bonn and Development Management at the University of Sussex (IDS). She has substantial work experience of civil-military and humanitarian affairs gained in the Balkan wars, as well as in post-conflict regions, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. Jurisic was involved in public information campaigning during Operation Allied Force with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in preparation of the first Parliamentary Elections in Kosovo, November 2001.

Other notable professional assignments include guest lecturing at West Point Military Academy and the London School of Economics, conducting research with the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), the European Institute in Washington DC, the Chicago Tribune, CNN International in Atlanta, and the UN Observer in New York. Recently, she was assigned as reviewer and contributor to the 4th e-Symposium with the Japan Centre for Conflict Prevention and invited to present this paper at the 9th Cornwallis workshop on Analysis for Stabilization and Counter-Terrorist Operations organized by the George Mason University, USA.

Director for Humanitarian Policy and Practice at InterAction since 1995, James Bishop works with the members of the 160-agency NGO coalition on disaster response abroad. He also is a member of the management committee of the Sphere Project. A retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer, he spent the final 14 years of his 33 year career on assignments as U.S. Ambassador to Niger, Liberia and Somalia and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.

William Garvelink's responsibilities since May 2001 include oversight of USAID’s worldwide humanitarian assistance and democracy programs. Offices within the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance include the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), Office of Food for Peace (FFP), Office of Democracy and Governance, Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM) and the Office of Private and Voluntary Cooperation (PVC). Mr. Garvelink is a member of the Senior Foreign Service.
Prior to this appointment, Mr. Garvelink served since 1999 as the USAID Mission Director in Eritrea. From 1988 to 1999 Mr. Garvelink served in OFDA first as the Assistant Director for Response and then as the Deputy Director. While in OFDA, he conducted assessments and directed relief operations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Near East, Europe and in the former Soviet Union. Mr. Garvelink led Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) to Albania, Armenia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, northern Iraq, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia and most recently Bam, Iran.

In 1998, Roy Brennen joined the IRC in the former Yugoslavia where he worked on a project with the principal goal of community building and conflict resolution. After the eruption of the “Kosovo Crisis” he designed and supervised water and sanitation programs in Kosovo and Macedonia. From the Balkans, in 2000, Roy moved to Sudan to coordinate emergency operations for the IRC as a result of the Eritrean/Ethiopian War.

He moved to Pakistan to work with newly emerging Afghan refugee camps and to Western Afghanistan to manage camps of people displaced by three years of drought. After a brief respite, he returned to Afghanistan to work with the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees on agricultural and water development programs and drought mitigation activities.
Roy moved from central Asia to Indonesia to provide training and support for Mercy Corps water and sanitation programs. He the COE in July 2003 as a Training Advisor in the Humanitarian Affairs and Practice Unit.

David Vinjamuri is a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, has worked in the US State Department and researched health and nutrition programs in rural India under a Kellogg Foundation grant. He lives in New York.