Byron Bland is associate director of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation. An ordained Presbyterian minister and former Stanford campus chaplain, he has served as an ombudsman and conflict resolution consultant for various community and church groups. His more recent work concerns the politics of reconciliation in divided societies. After serving the Stanford campus for 18 years as a chaplain, Bland left that post in 1994 to concentrate on peacemaking efforts in Northern Ireland. He is currently involved in a research project exploring the social and political dynamics of reconciliation with Community Dialogue, a grassroots dialogue organization in Northern Ireland. He is also working with community groups and civil leaders in Israel and the West Bank. Before coming to Stanford University in 1976, Bland was the pastor of a multiracial, urban church in San Francisco. While at Stanford, he was appointed an associate fellow at the Program for Interdisciplinary Studies during 1993‐1994. He is a founding member of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. For the past 20 years, he has taught an interdisciplinary course on peace at Stanford. He has also served as a lecturer in the Stanford Law School, the School of Education, and the International Relations program. He received an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech, an MA in social ethics and a master of divinity degree from the San Francisco Theological Seminary.

Brendan O’Leary was born in Cork, Ireland. He was brought up in Nigeria, Sudan, and Northern Ireland. He is a graduate of Keble College, Oxford University, where he was the holder of an Open Scholarship, and received a first class honors degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (1981). Prof. O'Leary wrote his Ph.D. thesis at the London School of Economics & Political Science, which won the Robert McKenzie Memorial Prize and was subsequently published by Oxford: Basil Blackwell (1989). Before coming to Penn, Prof. O’Leary was on the faculty of the London School of Economics and Political Science (1983 – 2003). He is the author, co‐author or co‐editor of 19 books and collections, and has authored or coauthored over 125 refereed articles and book chapters. Prof. O'Leary's book, How to Get Out of Iraq With Integrity (2009) is available from University of Pennsylvania Press. Prof. O’Leary was a political advisor to the British Labour Shadow Cabinet on Northern Ireland (1987 – 1997). He advised Irish, British, and American government ministers and officials and the Irish‐American Morrison delegation during the Northern Ireland peace process, and appeared as an expert witness before the U.S. Congress. He has also worked as a constitutional advisor for the E.U. and the U.N. Prof. O’Leary has been a regular contributor to public media and debate in the U.S., Great Britain and Ireland. He has written numerous op‐eds for The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Guardian, The Belfast Telegraph, The Independent (London), The Independent (Dublin), Canada’s Globe and Mail, The Irish Times and many others.

Michael Scharf is the John Deaver Drinko - Baker & Hostetler Professor of Law, and Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center, at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. In February 2005, Scharf and the Public International Law and Policy Group, a Non-Governmental Organization he co-founded and directs, were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by six governments and the Prosecutor of an International Criminal Tribunal for the work they have done to help in the prosecution of major war criminals, such as Slobodan Milosevic, Charles Taylor, and Saddam Hussein. During the first Bush and Clinton Administrations, Scharf served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, where he held the positions of Attorney-Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, Attorney-Adviser for United Nations Affairs, and delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In 1993, he was awarded the State Department's Meritorious Honor Award "in recognition of superb performance and exemplary leadership" in relation to his role in the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. A graduate of Duke University School of Law (Order of the Coif and High Honors), and judicial clerk to Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat on the Eleventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, Scharf is the author of over seventy scholarly articles and thirteen books, including Balkan Justice, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which was awarded the American Society of International Law's Certificate of Merit for the Outstanding book in International Law in 1999, Peace with Justice, which won the International Association of Penal Law Book of the Year Award for 2003, and Enemy of the State, which won the International Association of Penal Law Book of the Year Award for 2009. Scharf's most recent book is Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Scharf has also testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Armed Services Committee; and his Op Eds have been published by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and International Herald Tribune. Recipient of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law Alumni Association's 2005 "Distinguished Teacher Award" and Ohio Magazine's 2007 "Excellence in Education Award," Scharf teaches International Law, International Criminal Law, the Law of International Organizations, and the War Crimes Research Lab which provides research assistance to five international tribunals.

Bonnie Weir is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign. She studies the dynamics of violence employed by nonstate, politically‐motivated groups, with a particular interest in their potential decision to adopt peaceful strategies. Along with her substantive interests, Bonnie has focused on methodological shortcomings in the study of civil conflict, insurgency, and terrorism in the social sciences. Her concerns about several approaches that are typically used to test predominant theories on non‐state political violence lead her to conduct an extensive, interview‐based study of the case of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. She combines individual narratives with local‐level, “spatial” information to enhance our understanding of the often complex and personal nature of conflict and peacemaking among divided communities. Bonnie has worked with Children for Peace in Ireland and other groups in Northern Ireland and the United States whose goal is to help fully implement the institutions stipulated by the Good Friday Agreement and which tend to be lead by ex‐combatants.