Julie Mertus Julie Mertus Biography
		Julie Mertus is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of the MA program in Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs.  A graduate of Yale Law School, her work focuses on ethno-national conflict, human rights, refugee and humanitarian law and policy, gender and conflict and post-war transitions.  Her geographic expertise is in Central and Eastern Europe, with a specialty on the former Yugoslavia, but she has also participated in human rights projects in such diverse places as Vietnam, Brazil, China and South Africa. Her prior appointments include:  Senior Fellow, U.S. Institute of Peace; Human Rights Fellow, Harvard Law School; Writing Fellow, MacArthur Foundation, Fulbright Fellow (Romania), and Counsel, Human Rights Watch. As a scholar, Professor Mertus has published widely. Her work appears in leading multidisciplinary journals such as Ethics and International Affairs, Global Governance, International Studies Perspectives, International Feminist Journal of Politics and the Harvard International Review.   Her books include: Bait and Switch: Human Rights and American Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2004) and Human Rights and Conflict (United States Institute of Peace, 2004)(editor, with Jeffrey Helsing); Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War (U. Cal. Press 1999), War's Offensive Against Women: The Humanitarian Challenge in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan (Kumarian, 2000); The Suitcase: Refugees' Voices from Bosnia and Croatia (U. Cal. Press, 1999); Local Action/Global Change (UNIFEM 1999)(with Mallika Dutt and Nancy Flowers).    As a practitioner, Professor Mertus has over fifteen years experience in the human rights field, as a field researcher, lawyer, advocate, political analyst and trainer. At the international level, she has conducted human rights trainings with NGOs, political leaders, school teachers and student activists in over a dozen countries. She has also served as a consultant on human rights and humanitarian issues to UNHCR, the Humanitarianism and War Project, the Watson Institute for International Affairs, Women Waging Peace, OXFAM, the Soros Foundation, and many other nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations.  She has also appeared as an expert witness in asylum proceedings and has offered expert commentary on CNN, NPR, and Voice of America, and in such newspapers as The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor As an educator, Professor Mertus has been recognized for her innovative course designs and interactive teaching. She has written curriculum for several human rights courses and her own book on teaching women's human rights has been translated and used in Albanian, Arabic, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Thai and Ukrainian.  In 2003 she received the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Curriculum Development, and in 2002 the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Professional Service. MAIL:  mertus@american.edu WEB:  http://academic3.american.edu/%7Emertus/index.htm more
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