Presenters at the 2009 National Research Forum

Alex McDougall
From Repression to Restraint - coercion, accountability, and counterinsurgency in Latin America
Alex is a PhD candidate at the University of Calgary with research interests in Latin American politics and peacebuilding. His research examines state building during the civil wars in Peru and Colombia.  It seeks to determine why Peru's state building efforts were comparatively more successful than Colombia's.

Dr. Patrick Shamba Bakengela
Management Practices in Micro-Enterprises Facing the Development Challenge in Kinshasa
Dr. Bakengela received his PhD from the School of Management at the Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium in 2007 and is currently a Professor and researcher at the Protestant University of Congo. The research will identify avenues for resource development by a population made increasingly vulnerable through war and conflict and will examine the development of the Congo's natural resources from a sustainability perspective.

Amanda Coffie
Hidden Resources:  The Value of Returnees for Peace Building
Amanda is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Carleton University and is interested in issues of refugees, conflict management and resolution and peace building. Her research project examines the resources and potential contribution of returning refugees to peace building.  The study adopted a comparative approach to identify and analyze the resource pool of Liberian returnees from Ghana and Guinea.  The objective is to examine the effects of exile conditions and the treatment of returnees and their potential to contribute to the process of post-conflict peace building.

Jesse Salah Ovadia
Development and Conflict in Northern Ghana:  A Review of the 2008 ElectionJesse is a PhD candidate in Political Science at York University and a Researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies. He will present findings on the three northern regions in Ghana and how they lag behind the rest of the country in numerous development indicators.  The recently completed Ghanaian elections were widely seen as a test of the viability of multiparty democracy in sub-Saharan Africa.  This presentation blends together interviews and observations that paint a picture of a community being put to a test.

Joanne Lebert
Haiti's Dialogue Deficit:  What role for Canadian Peacebuilding and Development Actors?Joanne is the Coordinator of POWER, an African women's equality rights project and network based at the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa. In June 2009, Joanne conducted preliminary fieldwork in Haiti on behalf of Peacebuild, a network of Canadian NGOs and institutions, academics and individuals engaged in a wide range of activities related to addressing the causes and consequences of violent conflict. The objective was to explore the possibility, need and feasibility of establishing or supporting a civil society platform or coalition for violence reduction in-country.