Baha'i Chair Book Discussion: Fundamental Challenges to Global Peace and Security

Speaker Bio:

Simon Dalby is Professor Emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University and Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. His published research deals with climate change, environmental security and geopolitics. He is author of Pyromania: Fire and Geopolitics in a Climate Disrupted World (Agenda, forthcoming late 2023), Rethinking Environmental Security (Edward Elgar 2022), and Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability, (University of Ottawa Press, 2020) and co-editor of Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (Routledge 2019), and Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics (Routledge 2016). Simon Dalby was educated at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Victoria and holds a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University. Before joining Laurier and the Balsillie School he was Professor of Geography, Environmental Studies and Political Economy at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Charlotte Ku is Professor of Law and Director, Global Programs at the Texas A&M University School of Law. Previously, she was Professor of Law and Assistant Dean for Graduate and International Legal Studies at the University of Illinois College of Law. She served as Acting Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge and was Executive Director and Executive Vice President of the American Society of International Law from 1994 to 2006. Dr. Ku presently serves as Past President of the Academic Council on the United Nations System and is on the Board of Directors of the American Branch of the International Law Association. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute. Her research focuses on international law and global governance. Recent publications include: (With Vaughan Carter and Andrew P. Morriss), “Evolving Sovereignty Relationships Between Affiliated Jurisdictions: Lessons for Native American Jurisdictions,” (Forthcoming: Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, 2023).“Localising International Law,” in Human Society and International Law: Reflections on the Present and Future, Carlo Focarelli, ed. (Wolters Kluwer, 2023). “U.S. Approaches to Teaching International Law in a Global Environment,” Teaching International Law, Peter Hilpold, ed. (Forthcoming: Brill, 2023).

Hoda Mahmoudi has held The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland, College Park since 2012. As director of this endowed academic program, Professor Mahmoudi collaborates with a wide range of scholars, researchers, and practitioners to advance interdisciplinary analysis and open discourse on global peace. Before joining the University of Maryland faculty, Professor Mahmoudi served as the coordinator of the Research Department at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel. Prior to that, Dr. Mahmoudi was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northeastern Illinois University, where she was also a faculty member in the Department of Sociology. Professor Mahmoudi is co-author of A World Without War (Bahá’í Publishing, 2020), co-editor of Fundamental Challenges to Peace and Security: The Future of Humanity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), and co-editor of Systemic Racism in America: Sociological Theory, Education Inequality, and Social Change (Routledge, 2022). She is also co-editor of Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Dignity and Human Rights (Emerald, 2019), of The Changing Ethos of Human Rights (Elgar, 2021), and of Children and Globalization; Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2019).

Kate Seaman is Assistant Director of The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland. Dr. Seaman previously held positions at the University of Baltimore, the University of Bath and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Dr. Seaman received her Ph.D. from Lancaster University. She is the author of UN-tied Nations; The UN, Peacekeeping and the development of global security governance (Ashgate, 2014). Dr. Seaman is the co-editor of The Changing Ethos of Human Rights (Elgar, 2021), and co-editor of Fundamental Challenges to Global Peace and Security: The Future of Humanity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Her research has also been published in the journals Global Governance, and Politics and Governance.