Meet the Team

Brendan Cahill is the Executive Director of Fordham University's Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA). As such, he is the Program Director for all undergraduate and graduate programs and is responsible for its educational and training programs, its research areas, staff, partnerships and overall strategy. He has created, directed, and taught in academic programs throughout the world. He is the Publisher and Editor of The Refuge Press, an independent imprint with an emphasis on humanitarian and social justice issues.

Besides his work for the IIHA, Brendan sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of International Humanitarian Action. He is a member of the Advisory Board of The Humanitarian Centre of University College Dublin, the Executive Board of the Jesuit Universities Humanitarian Action Network, and the Curriculum Oversight and Steering Committee of Jesuit Worldwide Learning. Brendan sits on the boards of the Bartow Pell Conservancy, the Center for International Humanitarian Cooperation and the Point Lookout Civic Association. He is a Trustee of The Helen Hamlyn Trust in London and a Director of the KMC Foundation in New York. He is married with four children and lives in New York.

Phone: 718-817-5694
Email: [email protected]

Larry Hollingworth is a Visiting Professor of Humanitarian Studies at the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) at Fordham University in New York. Over the past decade, Mr. Hollingworth served as Humanitarian Coordinator on CIHC-supported missions for the United Nations in Iraq, Lebanon, East Timor, Palestine, and Pakistan. After serving as a British Army officer for thirty years, Mr. Hollingworth joined the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and held assignments in Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. He was appointed UNHCR Chief of Operations in Sarajevo during the siege of the city in the Balkan conflict. Mr. Hollingworth has also worked with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). He was awarded Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2002 and honored by the U.S Department of State on the 60th Anniversary of the 1951 Convention Related to the Status of Refugees in 2011. Mr. Hollingworth is a frequent lecturer on relief and refugee topics in universities and is a commentator on humanitarian issues for the BBC. In his current role as Humanitarian Programs Director, which he has held for over 15 years, Mr. Hollingworth directs humanitarian training courses for participants from or intending to enter the humanitarian aid world. He has directed 48 one-month courses and more than 50 one-week courses, of which there are over 2,300 alumni.

Anthony (Tony) Land, Ph.D. graduated from Brunel University in 1971 with the degree of Bachelor of Technology with Honours in Polymer Science and Technology and was awarded the degree of Master of Technology, also from Brunel University, in 1972 for research into high temperature resistant polymeric materials. Between 1972 and 1985, he worked with various NGOs in South Asia. From 1979 to 1985 he was employed by Tearfund and seconded to HEED in Bangladesh and to ACROSS in Southern Sudan, as Field Director. In 1985, Dr. Land joined UNHCR and worked with them in Pakistan, Indonesia, Malawi, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Russian Federation, Geneva, and Brussels, in operational field roles and in donor relations, until his retirement in 2006. Since leaving UNHCR, Dr. Land has undertaken various consultancies and taught on courses in humanitarian subjects at Fordham University (New York) as well as Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Manchester University, University of Copenhagen, and the University of Medical Science and Technology in Khartoum. In 2014, he was admitted into the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at University of Liverpool. His thesis is titled “Towards enhancing responsibility and accountability in humanitarian action: Understanding the subjective factors that influence evaluation of humanitarian actions and the implementation of the recommendations made.” Having served as the Senior Tutor for the Center for International Humanitarian Cooperation (CIHC) from 2008 to 2014, Dr. Land now holds a Senior Fellowship and is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) at Fordham University in New York.

Email: [email protected]

Ellen Bratina has been working at the intersection of education, media, and free expression for more than 20 years. In addition, she has coordinated fundraising initiatives in the K-12 education sector throughout New York City. She oversees the Institute’s international programs including the International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance, Mental Health in Complex Emergencies, and Education in Emergencies and coordinates Institute faculty, staff, and student operations around the world from the New York office at Fordham University. A graduate of Marquette University and former book publishing executive, Ellen has lived and worked in Central and Eastern Europe where she helped establish media companies and nonprofit institutions.

Phone: 718-817-5695
Email: [email protected]

Nadezhna Castellano is currently the Helen Hamlyn Education Fellow at the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University and the co-director of the course on Education in Emergencies for the IIHA. She is responsible for developing the capacity of the Institute in researching and designing innovative proposals that promote quality and durable educational solutions for forcibly displaced populations. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology by Salamanca University, where she worked as Assistant Professor between 2007 to 2013. Since then, she has worked as an Education in Emergencies specialist. Between 2013-2017 she worked as International Education Specialist for the Jesuit Refugee Service. She was in charge of developing and supervising the implementation of JRS Education Strategy in 14 countries, including Chad, South Sudan, Nigeria, DRC, Kenia, Lebanon, Jordan, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, among others. She has also worked as an independent evaluation consultant for different humanitarian and development agencies. Her work focuses on improving the quality of education for the forcibly displaced children and youth by linking research and practice, with a particular emphasis on Teacher Professional Development. Nadezhna is currently the IIHA-Fordham representative at INEE-Standards and Practice Working Group and member of the Teachers in Crisis Conflict (TiCC) collaborative. 

Laura Perez is the Helen Hamlyn Senior Fellow and Director of Graduate Studies at Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, where she manages the academic programs in humanitarian studies and also leads the children in armed conflict/affected by violence research pillar. Originally from Venezuela, she has more than 15 years of experience working on the protection of civilians in situations of armed conflict and is an expert on the UN Security Council’s children and armed conflict mandate. She has worked on these issues with UN agencies and humanitarian organizations in New York and Geneva, and in the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and Senegal. She previously served as Humanitarian Advocacy and Policy Specialist with UNICEF, Child Protection Team Leader with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Regional Child Protection Specialist on the MRM with UNICEF, Central Africa Analyst with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, Protection and Advocacy Adviser with the Norwegian Refugee Council, Protection Officer with UNHCR, and Coordinator of the Refugee Assistance Program of the New York City Bar Association. She holds an International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance from Fordham University, a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Université de Bourgogne, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Literature and Society from Brown University. She is fluent in English, French, and Spanish.

Giulio Coppi joins the IIHA with more than ten years of humanitarian professional experience managing operations in South America, West and Central Africa, South and Central Asia. Giulio earned his BA, MA and MAS in International Law with a specialization on Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in conflict. In his career, Giulio has cooperated with NGOs, Universities, the UN, the OECD and the ICRC. At the IIHA, Giulio oversees the Humanitarian Innovation program of the Institute, with a special focus on Open Source technology and community-based approaches. For this purpose, Giulio fosters relationships with all relevant interlocutors from the non-profit, private, and public sector alike in order to create broad partnerships and to promote a meaningful public debate on the global right of access to life-saving technology. Giulio is also the founder and administrator of the platform High Tech Humanitarians (HTH), of which IIHA is an official partner. HTH is a web based initiative dedicated to the gathering and improvement of open source humanitarian tools, to allow universal access to life-changing technology and to mark the beginning of a continuous bottom-up innovation process.

Email: [email protected]

Alberto Preato is a program manager at the UN Migration Agency (IOM) in Niger and a Visiting Humanitarian Research Scholar at the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs. He received a Master Degree in Sustainable Emergency Architecture at the Universidad Internacional de Catalunya in Barcelona and holds a Master in Sustainable Architecture at the Università Iuav di Venezia (Venice, Italy). Alberto Preato has been on the frontline of some of the most challenging humanitarian responses to natural disaster and complex crisis and has been deployed as shelter and settlement experts in Mozambique, Colombia, Haiti, Honduras, Vanuatu, Fiji and Niger. At the IIHA Alberto will work with partners from all over the world to find innovative design solution to better respond to the needs and uphold the rights of displaced populations in emergencies and protracted crisis.

H. E. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser has recently been designated as High Representative of the Alliance of Civilizations, after serving as President of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly. From 1998-2011, Mr. Al-Nasser served as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations, as well as presiding over three of the subsidiary bodies of the Council. During this term, he served as non-resident Ambassador to numerous countries in the Americas, such as Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, and Uruguay. From 2002-2003, he was the Vice-President of the fifty-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly. Earlier, Al-Nasser worked as a Qatar’s resident Ambassador to Jordan, and was appointed to his first United Nations position, Minister Plenipotentiary in 1986.

Mr. Al-Nasser has received numerous decorations and awards: three honorary doctorates, including an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Fordham University, national awards from a wide range of countries, and in 2009, Mr. Al-Nasser was made an honorary fellow of the Foreign Policy Association in New York.

Professor Ibrahim A. Gambari, CFR, OCORT, a scholar-diplomat, is the Founder/Chairman of the Board of Directors of Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development, a non- governmental think-tank on research, policy studies, advocacy and training on the nexus between conflict prevention and resolution, democratization and development in Africa.

He has had an illustrious career, spanning academia, government and international diplomacy, culminating with his appointment as the first United Nations Under-Secretary General and Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Africa (1999-2005). He was the Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid (1990-1994) and on Peace-keeping Operations (1990-1999). He was Head of the United Nations Department of Political Affairs (2005-2007) and also operated as UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Cyprus, Zimbabwe and Myanmar and Special Representative in Angola.

Earlier, he was Minister of External affairs (1984-1985) and subsequently Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations (1990-1999). Professor Gambari also served as Joint AU/UN Special Representative in Darfur and Head of UNAMID (2010-2012). He is currently a Chairperson of the Panel of Eminent Persons of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM).

Professor Gambari attended the Provincial (now Government) Secondary School, Ilorin before proceeding to the Floreat Collegium Kings College, Lagos. He received his B.SC (Econs) degrees from the London School of Economics (1968) and his MA and PHD in Political Science/International Relations (1970, 1974) from Columbia University, USA. He has taught at Universities in the United States, Nigeria and Singapore and has to his credit the authorship of a number of books. He has received several academic and national honours, including the “Commander of Federal Republic of Nigeria” (CFR), and the “Order of the Champion of the Oliver R. Tambo” (OCORT) of South Africa. He is the Pioneer Chancellor of the Kwara State University (KWASU), Ilorin, Nigeria, as well as the current Pro-chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of Bayero University, Kano (BUK). He is married with children and grandchildren.

Peter Hansen is Diplomat-In-Residence at Fordham University's Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs. He retired from the United Nations after 28 years of service, the last nine as Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The 22,000 employees of UNRWA provide education, health, relief and social services to more than 3.2 million registered Palestine refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Hansen had been Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator as well as Executive Director of the Commission on Global Governance, Geneva (1992-1994). He has also served in numerous other senior positions within the UN.

Mr. Hansen studied in Denmark and the United States. He completed his graduate and post-graduate work at Aarhus University in 1966. He is the author of several books and numerous articles in scholarly journals.

Mr. Jamie McGoldrick, former Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, United Nations Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, joins the IIHA as the first Distinguised Fellow. Mr. McGoldrick brings with him extensive experience in humanitarian affairs, international cooperation, economic development and political affairs. Since 2015 he has served as United Nations Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in Yemen. He assumed that position after serving as the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, and the UNDP Resident Representative in Nepal since 2013 and Resident Coordinator and Resident Representative of UNDP in Georgia from 2009 to 2013. He was previously a senior manager with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, notably as the Chief of the Humanitarian Reform Support Unit (2006-2009), and Section Chief of the Middle East, North Africa and Great Lakes Unit (2005-2006). He has also held positions with the International Red Cross movement and non-governmental organizations in a number of countries in Africa and as news producer and researcher with several television production companies in the United Kingdom and Europe. Mr. McGoldrick holds a master’s degree in political science and a bachelor’s degree in social sciences, and he has additional qualifications in disaster management, preventive diplomacy and mediation.

Andrea Tamburini has over 20 years of experience in the non-profit sector, in both humanitarian and development contexts globally.

An IDHA alumnus, Andrea obtained a post graduate diploma in Senior Leadership from Columbia University and a Master Degree in Political Science from the Università degli Studi in Milan, Italy.

Throughout his career he worked in more than 15 conflict-affected and fragile environments, including those prone to natural disasters. His field assignments include, among others, Kosovo, India, Vietnam, the Occupied Palestinian territories, Iraq, Jordan, Darfur and Lebanon.

Andrea Tamburini worked overseas for international NGOs such as CESVI, Oxfam and ACTED and served as a member of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the office for Italian Cooperation.

For the last 10 years, Andrea Tamburini worked with Action Against Hunger - USA leading the organization as its CEO from 2014 to 2019.

Willem van de Put is a cultural/medical anthropologist and philosopher by training. He worked in international public health since 1989, first with Médecines sans Frontières Holland, where he introduced medical anthropology and mental health programming, later as the founder of TPO Cambodia (1993-1998) and general director of HealthNet TPO (1998-2016). Together with Lynne Jones and the unfailing support of the IIHA at Fordham University, Willem started the course Mental Health in Complex Emergencies in 2004.

Currently Willem works as a research fellow with the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, and is affiliated as research fellow with Fordham University, with a focus on emergency programming and health systems development in fragile states. Willem has also co-founded ‘C4C’, a foundation working on ‘Culture for Change’, applying experience in action research in concrete programmes where cultural traits and beliefs are transformed from perceived barriers for effective healing to drivers of sustainable change.

Publications

Van de Put, W. A. C. M. and Eisenbruch, M. (2002). The Cambodian experience. Trauma, war, and violence: Public mental health in socio-cultural context. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers; US.

Eisenbruch, M., de Jong, J. T., and van de Put, W. (2004). Bringing order out of chaos: A culturally competent approach to managing the problems of refugees and victims of organized violence. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 17(2), 123-131.

Van de Put, W. and Eisenbruch, M. (2004): Internally displaced Cambodians: Healing Trauma in Communities. In: The Mental Health of Refugees: Ecological approaches to healing and adaptation. Edited by Kenneth Miller and Lisa Rasco, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey/London

Van de Put, W., and van der Veer, G. (2005): Counseling in Cambodia: cultural competence and contextual costs. Intervention, July 2005. Volume 3, Nr 2. p 87-96. Psychiatry, 62 supplement 2, 64-72

Ventevogel, P., van de Put, W., Faiz, H., van Mierlo, B., Siddiqi, M., & Komproe, I. H. (2012). Improving access to mental health care and psychosocial support within a fragile context: a case study from Afghanistan. PLoS Med, 9(5), e1001225.

Aleksandra Jelonek is the Communications and Research Officer at the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs where she works directly for the IIHA Executive Director, developing and implementing the communications and marketing strategy to fulfill the Institute's overall mission and vision. She holds a BA in Humanitarian Studies and is working towards her Master of Science in Humanitarian Studies at Fordham University. She has previously worked with Catholic Charities Community Services in the Refugee Resettlement Department assisting refugees, asylum seekers, and SIV holders with job applications, interview preparation, and application for state and city public benefits.