Guide to Specialists

Marie Pace
Program Officer, Center for Mediation and Conflict Resolution

E-mail: mpace@usip.org

Marie Pace joined USIP in August 2008 as a program officer in the Center for Mediation and Conflict Resolution. She has over ten years of international experience conducting research and working in Africa, the Middle East, the South Caucasus, and South Asia. In Nigeria, Pace served as Peace and Development Advisor for UNDP from 2005 to 2007 when she led the development of conflict prevention strategies for UNDP-Nigeria. Subsequently as a consultant to the Carter Center, she provided on-the-ground political analysis during Nigeria’s April 2007 general elections and in the post-election environment. At the Consensus Building Institute she facilitated strategic planning exercises for U.N. country teams in Haiti, Niger and Congo-Brazzaville. She is the Haiti case study author for the Reflecting on Peace Practices Project with Collaborative Development Associates.

From 2000 to 2005 Pace taught courses on research methods and issues of development, conflict and gender at the University of Connecticut, Clark University, the College of the Holy Cross and the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

Pace has researched citizen peacemaking efforts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and studied women’s experiences as agents of social change in Sri Lanka. Before returning to graduate school, from 1995 to 1997 she was lead trainer for a USAID-funded NGO training and resource center in Armenia. As a consultant for a UNIFEM project in 2003, Pace returned to the region and trained women in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan on mainstreaming gender into ongoing peacebuilding initiatives.

Pace holds an M.A. in international studies from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in Social Science from Syracuse University, where she was an affiliate with the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflict (PARC) program.

Publications:

• "Discursive Winds of Change: Applying New Forms of Practice to the Context of Nigeria’s Democratic Development" co-authored with Darren Kew, forthcoming in Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change, Recent Developments in Conflict Resolution and Collaboration edited by Rachel Fleishman, Rosemary O'Leary and Catherine Gerard (Volume 29, 2008)
• "Pathways to Peace: Revolution vs. Resolution" in Challenges and Paths to Global Justice: Insights from Scholars and Practitioners edited by Rich Friman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)