Bio: Joyce Neu

Joyce Neu, Ph.D., Special Advisor to the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice, is a conflict resolution specialist with a background in scholarship and practice in international mediation and negotiation.

After seven years as Executive Director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice, Neu accepted a new position as the first "Team Leader" for a new United Nations Standby Team of Mediation Experts that is being established by the UN in collaboration with the Norwegian Refugee Council. The purpose of the standby mediation team is to assist and support UN mediation efforts around the world. The team will be deployed anywhere in the world with perhaps as little as 72 hours notice. While leaving the Institute as a paid member of the staff, she remains affiliated with the Institute as an IPJ associate and special advisor.

Neu has conducted conflict assessments in Albania, Georgia, Latvia, Macedonia, Madagascar and Moldova and has helped facilitate discussions between parties in conflict in Bosnia, Congo-Brazzaville, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Mali, Sudan and Uganda. During her years at The Carter Center, Neu accompanied the former President to Bosnia where they obtained a four-month ceasefire in December 1994. She led a Carter Center team working on restoring Sudan – Uganda bilateral relations that culminated in a summit with the two heads of state, with President Carter serving as mediator, and the 1999 Nairobi Peace Agreement. During the 2006-2007 academic year, Neu was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC where her research focused on the impact of International Criminal Court interventions on peace processes. She sits on the boards of Global Majority, the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research and the Western Behavioral Sciences Leadership Council. In 2006, she received the University of Manitoba's Distinguished Visitor Award and in 2000 she was recognized for her work in Africa by the National Peace Foundation with the Peacemaker/Peacebuilder Award. Neu is Professor of Practice in the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego and holds a Ph.D. and MA in linguistics from the University of Southern California, as well as a BA in English and French from the University of Colorado. Neu was a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal and a Fulbright professor in Poland.  

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