Tatiana Carayannis, Associate Director

Tatiana Carayannis joined CPPF in September 2006 from the City University of New York's Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, where she directed the research of the United Nations Intellectual History Project. Until 2000 she was an adjunct instructor in international relations at CUNY and before that a researcher at the Carnegie Corporation of NY. In 1998, she served as rapporteur for the UN Secretary-General's Resource Group on the DRC, and between 1989 and 1995 as program officer at the Institute for International Education, where she worked on democratic transitions and security sector reform in West and southern Africa. She is co-author of UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice (Indiana University Press, 2005). Her second book, on the first UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo, is under contract for 2007. Her research interests include wars and peacebuilding efforts in Central Africa, global-local conflict linkages, irregular armed groups, and the agenda-setting role of UN ideas. Her work has appeared in a number of books and academic journals, including the Journal of International Affairs, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Journal of Global Social Policy, and Forum for Development Studies. She has also consulted for a variety of multilateral and non-governmental actors, including UN DPKO, UNICEF, the Ford Foundation, and the International Peace Academy. Tatiana has been a Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar and is currently completing a Ph.D. dissertation on conflict networks and hybrid wars in Central Africa. She holds an M.Phil. from The CUNY Graduate Center, an M.A. from New York University, and a B.A. from Adelphi University. She received a Cértificat Pratique de français commercial et économique from the Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de Paris and training in elite interview methods from Columbia University.

Jim Della-Giacoma, Associate Director

Jim Della-Giacoma joined CPPF in October 2006. Previously, he was a senior advisor on global citizen participation programs at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington, D.C. From 2000 to 2003, Jim helped set up NDI's office in Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor) managing programs related to civic participation, security sector reform, public opinion research, and the encouragement of peaceful political debate. In 1999 and 2000, he served in the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) as well as the mission's representative in Jakarta. Previously, he worked on the 1999 East Timor referendum in the UN Department of Political Affairs in New York. In addition to consulting with the Asia Foundation, World Bank and other UN agencies, Jim had a diverse career in journalism, including four years as a foreign correspondent in Jakarta with Agence France Presse and Reuters. He has written and worked on a number of public opinion research reports on post-conflict countries including Timor Lorosa'e is Our Nation, Carrying the People's Aspirations (with Alarico da Costa Ximenes) and Government Within Reach (on East Timor) as well as A Society in Transition (Afghanistan) and War is Behind Us Now (Liberia). He also wrote a short history of the UN's involvement in East Timor, Self-Determination Through Popular Consultation, and The Anti-Corruption Handbook (with Fred Wherry) for the World Bank. He holds an M.A. in Asian studies from the University of New South Wales and a B.Ec. in political economy from the University of Sydney.

Renata Segura, Program Officer

Renata Segura joined CPPF in June 2001. She has written on the contemporary relationship between decentralization and violence in her native Colombia, military reform, democratization, and institutional engineering. Renata has taught an undergraduate course, Political Violence in the 20th Century, at Parsons School of Design and served as Program Officer for the Janey Program in Latin American Studies at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research for several years. Prior to coming to the United States, she worked for the NGO and research center CINEP in Bogotá, where she was a researcher on several projects related to civil society, conflict and political crisis. In addition to her academic background, Renata worked for several years as a reporter for a nationally televised news program and a widely-read news magazine. Recent publications include "Ni Una Asamblea Más Sin Nosotros! Exclusion, Inclusion and the Politics of Constitution-Making in the Andes", co-written with Ana María Bejarano (Constellations, Vol. II, Issue 2, June 2004). Renata received her Ph.D. from the political science department, New School for Social Research; her dissertation focuses on constitution-making as a mechanism for inclusion and conflict resolution in Colombia and Ecuador. At the New School, she was a Louis Fischer Fellow, an Inter-American Foundation Fellow, and a Colfuturo grant recipient. She holds an M.A. in comparative politics from the New School for Social Research and a B.A. in political science from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá.

Chi-Hoon Kim, Program Assistant

Chi-Hoon Kim joined CPPF in July 2006. She earned her B.A. in government with a concentration in international relations, Phi Beta Kappa, from Wesleyan University. She is the recipient of the 2002 Freeman Asian Scholarship, a merit-based four-year scholarship granted to 22 students in 11 Asian countries. She is fluent in Korean, English and Chinese, and proficient in French.

 

 

Benjamin Levitan, Program Assistant

Benjamin Levitan joined CPPF in January 2007. He earned a B.A. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, where he was a four-year member of the John Jay Scholars honors program. During the 2004-2005 academic year, he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Political Review and served on the executive board of the Columbia Political Union. In 2006, he held an editorial internship at The Onion.