Opening roundtable: Thinking about Global Security

Speaker bios:

Amitav Acharya (American University, Washington D.C.)  

Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC. Previously he was a Professor at York University, Toronto and University of Bristol, U.K. He was also a Fellow of Harvard University’s Asia Center, Research Fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Christensen Fellow at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. His books include Whose Ideas Matter (Cornell 2009); The Making of Southeast Asia (Cornell 2013); The End of American World Order (Polity 2014, 2018); and Constructing Global Order (Cambridge 2018). He is also co-author with Barry Buzan of The Making of Global International Relations (Cambridge 2019); and editor, Why Govern? Rethinking Demand and Progress in Global Governance (Cambridge 2016). His articles have appeared in International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, International Affairs, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. He has written op-eds for Financial Times, International Herald Tribune (now International New York Times) Washington Post, Times of India, Australian Financial Review, and other newspapers around the world, and appeared on news media such as CNN International, BBC TV and BBC World Service Radio. Professor Acharya holds multiple honorary appointments, including Professor of Practice in Transnational Governance at SOAS University, London; Honorary Professor at Rhodes University, South Africa; Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria;  and Guest Professor at Nankai University, China. In 2020, he received American University’s highest honor: Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award. Acharya is the first non-Western scholar to be elected (for 2014-15) as the President of the International Studies Association (ISA), the largest and most influential global network in international studies. He has won three Distinguished Scholar Awards from the ISA: Global South Caucus (2016), International Organization Section (2018) and Global International Relations Section (2023). 

Deborah Avant (University of Denver)

Deborah Avant is the Sié Chéou-Kang Chair for International Security and Diplomacy at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Her research (funded by the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation, among others) has focused on civil-military relations, and the roles of non-state actors in controlling violence and generating governance. She is author/editor of Civil Action and the Dynamics of Violence in Conflicts (with Marie Berry, Erica Chenoweth, Rachel Epstein, Cullen Hendrix, Oliver Kaplan, and Timothy Sisk), The New Power Politics: Networks and Transnational Security Governance (with Oliver Westerwinter); Who Governs the Globe? (with Martha Finnemore and Susan Sell); The Market for Force: the Consequences of Privatizing Security; and Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons From Peripheral Wars, along with articles in such journals as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Perspectives on Politics, and Foreign Policy. She was the inaugural director of the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy. Under her leadership the Sié Chéou-Kang Center became a model for promoting engaged scholarship on the many different policy consequential organizations that affect peace, security, and governance, grew from one to nineteen affiliated faculty members, and became the first home to the International Studies Association’s: Journal of Global Security Studies, for which she served as editor in chief. She is an observer member of the ICoCA and, in 2013, was awarded an honorary doctorate from University of St.Gallen for her research and contribution toward regulating private military and security companies, and is the president of the International Studies Association. Professor Avant regularly advises governments, companies, NGOs, and others on the roles that many play in contemporary global governance and serves on numerous governing and editorial boards.

Pinar Bilgin (Bilkent University) 

Pinar Bilgin is a Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University. She holds a Ph.D. in International Politics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (2000), an M.Sc. in Strategic Studies from UWA, an M.A. in International Relations from Bilkent University and a B.Sc. in International Relations from Middle East Technical University. She is the author of Regional Security in the Middle East: A Critical Perspective (2005; 2nd ed. 2019), The International in Security, Security in the International (2016) and co-editor of Routledge Handbook of International Political Sociology (2017) and Asia in International Relations: Unthinking Imperial Power Relations (2017).She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at WWIC, Washington DC in 2006-07 and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London in 2013-14.  She was a visiting professor at the Center for Contemporary Middle East Studies of the University of Southern Denmark and a visiting scholar at the Center for the Resolution of International Conflicts (CRIC) at the University of Copenhagen during 2015-16. 

She is currently one of the Associate Editors of International Studies Quarterly (2019- ) and the co-editor (with Monica Herz) of the Palgrave book series, Critical Security Studies in the Global South.

She received ‘the best article published in Politics in 2004′  award by the Political Studies Association in 2005. She is also a recipient of  the ‘GEBİP Young Scientist Award’ by Turkish Academy of Sciences (2008) and ‘TUBİTAK Young Scientist Incentive Award’ by the The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (2009).  She has been an Associate Member of Turkish Academy of Sciences since 2012. Some of her publications can be reached at www.pinarbilgin.me.

Elizabeth Joyce (UNSC CTED)

Elizabeth Joyce is Chief of Section in the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) at the Security Council, where she supervises work on the Americas and Asia Pacific, including CTED’s dialogue with Member States, assessments of Member States’ counter-terrorism efforts, and the facilitation of technical assistance. 

From 2003 to 2013, she was head of the United Nations delegation to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and established the UN’s global multi-year initiative with the FATF to improve international standards aimed at protecting non-profit organizations (NPOs) from terrorist financing abuse, with the Governments of Canada and the United Kingdom. From 1999 to 2005, she worked at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna, Austria, where she managed the Global Programme against Money Laundering, Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing (GPML). She was presiding officer of the Joint Appeals Board from 2002 to 2005 and led the internal justice administration system for the United Nations Office at Vienna. She was formerly head of research and analysis at the Institute for European-Latin American Relations (IRELA) in Madrid, on behalf of the European Union, and editor at the international consultancy Oxford Analytica. 

Dr Joyce has undergraduate degrees in English (Bristol) and Law (Manchester School of Law), and an M.Phil in Latin American Studies and a D.Phil in Politics from Oxford University. She has been a Reuters Fellow at the University of Oxford, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Georgetown University, Washington D.C.

Adam Roberts (FBA, KCMG) (University of Oxford)

Adam Roberts is Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for International Studies in Oxford University's Department of Politics and International Relations. He is also Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, and Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.

He was President of the British Academy (2009-13). He is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics & Political Science (1997- ), of St Antony's College Oxford (2006- ), and of the University of Cumbria (2014- ). He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by King's College London (2010), Aberdeen University (2012), Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo (2012), and Bath University (2014). He is a Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011- ), and a Member of the American Philosophical Society (2013- ). He was a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London (2002-8); member of the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board (2003-15); and member, Board of Advisers of the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare, at the United States Military Academy, West Point, (September 2016–).