Georgia–Abkhazia

Bruno Coppieters is Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and has facilitated a number of academic dialogue initiatives with individuals from Georgia and Abkhazia.

Christine Bell is Director of the Centre for International and Comparative Human Rights Law, Queens University of Belfast and a member of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission set up under the Belfast Agreement. She is currently writing a book on peace agreements, human rights and international law. 

Dmitrii Danilov is the Head of the Department for European Security Studies at the Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Previously he worked as a senior researcher in the analytic unit of the General Staff. He has published extensively on East–West relations.

Ghia Nodia is Chairman of the Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, an independent think tank in Tbilisi, and a sociology professor at Tbilisi State University. He has participated in dialogue and academic meetings with representatives from Abkhazia. His most recent international fellowship was at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin.

Greg Hansen has worked as a UN Volunteer in Georgia and as a civilian observer in the former Yugoslavia. He has conducted peace research in Lebanon and Mozambique and in 1982 served with a Canadian contingent of UN peacekeeping forces in Cyprus. In recent years Hansen was a trainer and field liaison for the Local Capacities for Peace Project and a consultant on Caucasus issues to the Humanitarianism and War Project.

Lara Olson was Project coordinator for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Georgia (1996–98), managing repatriation and assistance efforts in South Ossetia and co-ordinating the Georgian-Ossetian Dialogue Project with the Conflict Management Group.

Liana Kvarchelia is a community facilitator in Abkhazia. She has previously worked with the Centre for Humanitarian Programmes, a Sukhum-based NGO working on projects related to conflict resolution, and has extensive experience of participation in meetings with NGO representatives from Georgia.

Paula Garb is Associate Director of Global Peace and Conflict Studies, University of California, Irvine. She has facilitated a series of meetings on environmental issues and citizen diplomacy with Abkhaz and Georgian NGOs.

S. Neil MacFarlane is Lester B. Pearson Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, Professorial Fellow at St Anne’s College and Director of Oxford’s Centre for International Studies. In 1997, with colleagues at Brown University, he completed a monograph on humanitarian action in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that followed a companion study on Georgia’s civil conflicts published in 1996.

Susan Allen Nan has engaged in second track conflict resolution work on the Georgia–Abkhazia conflict through George Mason University and the University of California at Irvine. She received a United States Institute of Peace 1997–98 Peace Scholar Fellowship which supported the research for her article.