Brian Levy currently is Head of the Bank's Governance and Anti-Corruption Secretariat in the World Bank - from where co-ordinates implementation of the Bank Group's GAC strategy. He is the author of Governance Reform: Bridging Monitoring and Action (World Bank, 2007), which builds on his 2006 work on governance monitoring featured in the 2006 Global Monitoring Report, Mutual Accountability: Aid, Trade and Governance . He worked in the World Bank's Africa Vice Presidency from 1991 to 2003 on the challenges of strengthening the institutional underpinnings of African development, for the last four years as sector manager of the Africa Public Sector Reform and Capacity Building Unit. He was a member of the core team which produced the World Bank's 1997 World Development Report, The State in a Changing World.  He has published numerous books and articles on the interactions between public institutions, the private sector and development in Africa, East Asia, and elsewhere, most recently editing (jointly with Sahr Kpundeh) the volume, Building State Capacity in Africa (World Bank Institute, 2004) Prior to joining the Bank he was assistant professor in development economics at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He completed his Ph.D in economics at Harvard University in 1983.

Richard Goldstone served on South Africa's Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 to 1989 and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court from 1990 to 1994. During the transition from apartheid to multiracial democracy, Goldstone headed the Goldstone Commission investigations into political violence in South Africa. He was credited with playing an indispensable role in the transition and became a household name in South Africa, attracting widespread international support and interest. Goldstone's work investigating violence led to him being nominated to serve as the first chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. On his return to South Africa he took up a seat on the newly-established Constitutional Court of South Africa. In 2009, Goldstone led an independent fact-finding mission created by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the Gaza War.

James Campbell's research focuses on African American history and the wider history of the black Atlantic. He is particularly interested in the long history of interconnections and exchange between Africa and America, a history that began in the earliest days of the transatlantic slave trade and continues into our own time.  In recent years, his research has moved in the direction of so-called “public history," the ways in which societies tell stories about their pasts, not only in textbooks and academic monographs but also in historic sites, museums, memorials, movies, and political movements.

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. He is cofounder and director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government, a member of the Policy Advisory Board at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and served as a senior consultant to the President's Council on Bioethics. His scholarship focuses on the interplay of law, ethics, and politics in modern society. His current research is concerned with the material and moral preconditions of liberal democracy in America and abroad.

Did Jordan's general elections, called forth after parliament's dissolution a year earlier, introduce new hope for democratic reform in an increasingly autocratic kingdom?  The panel of speakers at this research seminar will address the aftermath of the parliamentary contest of November 2010, assessing broad trends in this critical state following the November elections.

The new Philippine president, Benigno Aquino III, has inherited a Supreme Court packed with his predecessor's appointees.  The highly politicized appointment process has weakened the independence of the judiciary and shows the impact of bad governance and the power of vested interests.  Marites Dañguilan Vitug will address these issues and their larger implications as President Aquino vows to fight corruption and prosecute former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her alleged ill-gotten wealth.  Copies of Shadow of Doubt will be available for signing and sale by the author following her talk.

Marites Dañguilan Vitug is a prize-winning author and journalist.  Her latest title is Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court (2010).  Other works include Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao (with Glenda Gloria, 2000) and Jalan-Jalan: A Journey through EAGA (with Criselda Yabes, 1998).  Asiaweek named Jalan-Jalan one of the best books on Asia published that year.  Ms Vitug won the Philippine National Book Award in journalism for her first book, Power from the Forest: The Politics of Logging (1993).  In addition to publishing widely on Philippine issues, she chairs the advisory board of Newsbreak.

Born in New York in 1977, Nir Rosen has been reporting from Iraq since April of 2003 and has spent most of the last seven and a half years in Iraq. He recently returned from a trip to seven provinces in the country. He has also reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Mexico, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Turkey and Egypt. He has written for magazines such as The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and most major American publications. He has filmed documentaries. He is a Fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security. His new book, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World, is about occupation, resistance, sectarianism and civil war from Iraq to Lebanon to Afghanistan.

Abbas Kadhim is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.  He also holds a Visiting Scholar status at Stanford University since 2005.  Between 2003 and 2005, he taught courses on Islamic theology and ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

His recent publications include: "a Case of Partial Cooperation: the 1920 Revolution and Iraqi Sectarian Identities" (forthcoming); "Forging a Third Way: Sistani's Marja‘iyya between Quietism and Wilāyat al-Faqīh, in Iraq, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World, edited by Ali Paya and John Esposito, Routledge,  July  2010;  "Widows' Doomsday: Women and War in the Poetry of Hassan al-Nassar," in Women and War in Muslim Countries, ed. Faegheh Shirazi, Austin: The University of Texas Press, June 2010; "Opting for the Lesser Evil: US Foreign Policy Toward Iraq, 1958-2008," in Bob Looney (ed.) Handbook of US Middle East Relations, London: Routledge, 2009; and Shi`i Perceptions of the Iraq Study Group, Strategic Insights, vol. VI, issue 2 (March 2007).

His book translations include Shi‘a Sects: A Translation with an Introduction and Notes, London: Islamic College for Advanced Studies Press (2007); Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, by Hamid Algar (Arabic Translation), Köln, Germany: Dar al-Jamal (2006); and Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping our Lives, by Anthony Giddens (Arabic Translation), with Dr. Hassan Nadhem, Beirut: (2003).

His current projects include editing the Routledge Handbook of Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, London: Routledge (forthcoming 2011) and finishing a manuscript on The 1920 Revolution and the Making of the Modern Iraqi State (under review).

Ben Rowswell is a Canadian diplomat with a specialization in statebuilding and stabilization. As Representative of Canada in Kandahar from 2009 to 2010 he directed the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team, leading a team of more than 100 American and Canadian diplomats, aid workers, civilian police and other experts in strengthening the provincial government at the heart of the Afghan conflict. Having served before that as Deputy Head of Mission in Kabul, Rowswell brings a practitioner's knowledge of Afghanistan and of statebuilding in general to the CDDRL.

His previous conflict experience includes two years as Canada's Chargé d'Affaires in Iraq between 2003 and 2005, and with the UN in Somalia in 1993. He has also served at the Canadian embassy in Egypt and the Permanent Mission to the UN, and as a foreign policy advisor to the federal Cabinet in Ottawa. An alumnus of the National Democratic Institute, he founded the Democracy Unit of the Canadian foreign ministry.

Rowswell is a Senior Associate of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the co-editor of "Iraq: Preventing a New Generation of Conflict" (2007). He studied international relations at Oxford and at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.