Thomas Hegghammer is the Zukerman fellow at CISAC for 2012-2013 and senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in Oslo. He has previously held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at Harvard, Princeton and New York Universities. Thomas studies militant Islamism with a particular focus on transnational jihadi groups. His book Jihad in Saudi Arabia (Cambridge 2010) won the silver medal of the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council of Foreign Relations. He also co-authored Al-Qaida in its own Words (Harvard 2008) and The Meccan Rebellion (Amal Press 2011). His other publications include academic articles for International Security and theJournal of Peace Research, op-eds for the New York Times and the Guardian, and reports for the International Crisis Group and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. He has commented widely in international media and has testified in parliamentary hearings on terrorism legislation in Canada and Denmark.  

Thomas currently works on two main research projects, one on the Islamist foreign fighter phenomenon and the other on socio-cultural practices (rituals, music, etc) in terrorist groups. He is in the process of completing two books: a monograph about the jihadi ideologue Abdallah Azzam and an edited volume about “jihad culture”, both for Cambridge University Press. While at CISAC, he will begin work on a new comparative study of socio-cultural practices in terrorist groups of different ideological persuasions.

Rose McDermott is a Professor of Political Science at Brown University. McDermott received her Ph.D.(Political Science) and M.A. (Experimental Social Psychology) from Stanford. McDermott has also taught at Cornell, UCSB and Harvard and has held fellowships at Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and Harvard’s Women and Public Policy Program. She was a 2008-2009 fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and a 2010-2011 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.  She is the author of three books, a co-editor of two additional volumes, and author of over ninety academic articles across a wide variety of academic disciplines encompassing topics such as experimentation, identity, emotion, intelligence, decision making, and the biological and genetic bases of political behavior.   She has served on the American Political Science Association Counsel and Administrative Counsel, as well as the publications committee for APSA and the International Studies Association. She is President of the International Society of Political Psychology.  She has taught courses in undergraduate and graduate International Relations Theory, graduate and undergraduate International Security, American Foreign Policy, and War in Film and Literature. 

Effective water management is one key element of agricultural innovation and growth. This talk: outlines evolving and changing good global practices with respect to water management and agriculture; examines developments in both water and agriculture in Africa; and suggests avenues which might be explored in improving water management and increasing agricultural productivity in Africa.

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 is the Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Environmental Engineering and Environmental Health at Harvard University where he directs the Harvard Water Security Initiative. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on water management and development. In 2010 he was nominated for the Joseph R. Levenson Prize for exceptional teaching of Harvard undergraduates.

Briscoe's career has focused on the issues of water, other natural resources and economic development. He has worked as an engineer in the government water agencies of South Africa and Mozambique; as an epidemiologist at the Cholera Research Center in Bangladesh; and as a professor of water resources at the University of North Carolina. In his 20-year career at the World Bank, he held high-level technical positions, including Country Director for Brazil (the World Bank’s biggest borrower). Mr. Briscoe's role in shaping the governance and strategy of the World Bank is the subject of a chapter in the definitive recent history of the Bank, Sebastian Mallaby's The World's Banker (Penguin, 2006).

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 is an Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Policy in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She is also an affiliate of Stanford University's Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE), where she was previously a postdoctoral researcher. Jennifer is a physicist by training whose research focuses on simultaneously achieving global food security and mitigating climate change. She designs, implements, and evaluates technologies for poverty alleviation and agricultural adaptation, and she studies the links between energy poverty and food and nutrition security, the mechanisms by which energy services can help alleviate poverty, and the environmental impacts of food production and consumption. Much of Jennifer's current research focuses on the developing world.

Professor Jang-Jip Choi argues that South Korean politics are characterized by extreme uncertainty and that this is exemplified by the campaign for the presidential election on December 19. Succeeding generations of politicians have failed to organize parties on a new social basis, to represent the interests and passions of the voters, or to develop their own competence in dealing with urgent social and economic problems. Professor Choi seeks to explain this phenomenon from historical and structural perspectives.

Specializing in the contemporary political history of Korea, the theory of democracy, comparative politics and labor politics, Professor Choi is the author of numerous books, scholarly articles and political commentaries on Korean politics, including Democracy After Democratization: The Korean Experience (forthcoming), From Minjung to Citizens (2008), and Which Democracy? (2007). He holds a BA from Korea University, and an MA and a PhD, both in political science, from the University of Chicago, and was a professor in the department of political science at Korea University until his retirement in 2008.

As recently as 2007, the United States seemed headed towards ever greater fossil fuel import dependence, as domestic oil and natural gas production dwindled and consumption continued to grow. Five years later, the landscape looks dramatically different. An explosion in natural gas production from shales has overturned paradigms and sparked bold talk of LNG exports. While less remarked-upon, unconventional oil production has followed suit, helping to boost liquids output 20% from 50-year lows and vaulting North Dakota ahead of Alaska to become the nation’s second-largest oil producer. A new order is emerging in the coal market as well, with efforts underway to ship cheap, low-sulfur coal from the western U.S. to China.

The new role for the U.S. as a hotbed of production and technology development for unconventional resources, a reduced import market, and a possible key exporter of natural gas and coal raises a host of political, economic, and environmental questions. The goal of this conference is to contribute to insightful and data-driven dialogue on these pressing (and often politically-charged) issues by bringing together academics, policymakers, industry experts, and other stakeholder groups.

Session topics will include: (1) the environmental and economic impacts of proposed exports of Powder River Basin coal to China; (2) which will happen first: major LNG exports from the U.S. or shale gas development at scale outside of the U.S. (and especially in China); (3) the changing role of the U.S. in the global oil market, and its geopolitical and economic implications; (4) the cases for and against pipelines connecting Canada’s oil sands with U.S. refineries; and (5) the trajectory of future natural gas demand from the U.S. transportation and power sectors.  

Each session will feature a presentation by an academic or industry expert summarizing the state of knowledge on the topic and pointing out major unresolved issues. Discussants from the policymaking and stakeholder communities will then provide their perspectives on the presentation. This will be followed by an opportunity for audience comment and discussion.