Marie-Joëlle Zahar is Professor of Political Science, Director of the Research Network on Peace Operations and Fellow at the Centre for International Research and Studies at the Université de Montréal. She is also a member of the Scientific Board of the Network for Strategic Analysis. From March 2013 until August 2015, she served as Senior Expert on Power Sharing on the Standby Team of Mediation Experts at the UN Department of Political Affairs where she remains on the UN mediation roster. In 2017, she was a senior expert in the Office of the Special Envoy of the United Nations for Syria. A graduate of McGill University, her research interests span the dynamics of civil war and the politics of conflict-resolution. She is a specialist of the study of non-state armed groups, transition violence and post-conflict power sharing. A non-resident Senior Fellow with the International Peace Institute (New York) and a member of the Folke Bernadotte Academy’s research working groups (Sweden), Professor Zahar has held a number of visiting appointments. She was a research fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and cooperation and a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies (University of Toronto). She has co-edited or co-authored 5 books and has also penned over 75 publications in academic journals and edited volumes on conflict resolution and peace implementation as well as a number of research and policy papers published by think-tanks and policy institutes. Her research has been funded, among others by the Carnegie Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the United States Institute for Peace.
Expertise
- Middle East
- Peace Consolidation
- Ethnic Conflicts
Selected Publications
- Marie-Joëlle Zahar & Erin McCandless, “Sustaining Peace One Day at a Time: Inclusion, Transition Crises, and the Resilience of Social Contracts,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 14:1 (2019): 119-138.
- Marie-Joëlle Zahar & Arthur Boutellis, “The Challenges of Mediation in Gray Zones: The Case of Mali,” In Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kyle Beardsley, David Quinn (editors), Research Handbook on Mediating International Crises (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019).
- Joy Aoun & Marie-Joëlle Zahar, “Lebanon: Confessionalism, Consociationalism, and Social Cohesion,” In Timothy Sisk & Fletcher Cox (editors) Peacebuilding in Deeply Divided Societies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
- Arthur Boutellis & Marie-Joëlle Zahar, “A Process in Search of Peace: Lessons from the Inter-Malian Agreement,” International Peace Institute (2017).
- Marie-Joëlle Zahar, “Reframing the Spoiler Debate in Peace Processes,” In Contemporary Peacemaking: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003): 114-124.
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