NYU Grant Supports New Peacebuilding Curriculum

Thomas Hill, an adjunct assistant professor at the Center for Global Affairs and a peacebuilding practitioner who divides his time between New York and Iraq, was awarded a curricular development challenge grant from the University’s Office of Faculty Development in spring of 2009. The $3,500 award will fund development of his proposal to create a peacebuilding concentration within the M.S. in Global Affairs degree program in the coming year.

“Given the current state of civil wars, intra-state conflicts, and the prospect of more failed states in many parts of the world, this concentration fills a missing, but critical, element in our graduate program,” says the Center’s divisional dean, Vera Jelinek.

The concentration will build upon existing graduate courses in Peacemaking and Peacebuilding, which Hill currently teaches, as well as such related courses as International Negotiation, Conflict Assessment: Theory and Practice, Ethnic Conflicts, and Peacebuilding and Development.

A graduate of Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently pursuing a Ph.D., Hill has taught at NYU-SCPS since 2007. He has worked for eight years in Iraq, designing and conducting conflict resolution programs and training workshops for local leaders in the wake of the Iraqi war. Previously, Hill worked for 13 years as a professional journalist.u