Ned Lazarus, PhD candidate, American University School of International Service
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Ned Lazarus is a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at American University’s School of International Service. He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation, entitled Evaluating the American Generation of Israeli/Palestinian Encounters, in residence at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation. His research interests include conflict analysis and resolution, comparative politics, intergroup dialogue, identity, narrative, nationalism, impact evaluation, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. |
Ned’s research is a long-term evaluation of US-based peace education programs for Israeli and Palestinian youth. His dissertation combines qualitative and quantitative methods to track the peace-building activity of more than 800 Israeli and Palestinian graduates of the largest such program, Seeds of Peace, from 1993 through the present.
The study focuses in particular on the effects of dramatic changes in personal, organizational and conflict contexts on graduates’
commitments to peace-building. The dissertation is inspired and informed by Ned’s work from 1996-2004 as Program Director at the Seeds of Peace Jerusalem Center for Coexistence, during which he directed dialogue and peace-building programs involving hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian graduates of Seeds of Peace, their families and communities. For his doctoral research, Ned was awarded a "Peace Scholar" dissertation fellowship from the United States Institute of Peace.
Ned received his BA with Honors from Wesleyan University’s College of Letters in 1995. He is fluent in Hebrew and comfortable in colloquial Levantine Arabic and Spanish.
Recent Academic Publications:
“Making Peace with the Duel of Narratives: Dual-Narrative Approaches for Teaching the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict,” Israel Studies Forum
23 (1): May 2008, 107-124.
“The Peacebuilder’s Paradox and the Dynamics of Dialogue: A Psychosocial Portrait of Israeli/Palestinian Encounters,” chapter co-authored with Dr. Mohammed Abu-Nimer for Kuriansky, Judy (ed.), Peacebuilding in the Promised Land (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007).
“Playing Pin the War on the Lobby,” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, Berkeley Electronic Press 4 (1):
2006.