Joelle Gentile
Joëlle joined the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies (at the time known as PIAH) in October 2007. With a degree in Business Administration (HES) she has worked for a number of companies in the Geneva region.
She acquired various skills prior to joining the Centre, among others in implementing customer satisfaction surveys and designing a salary management programme.
Functions
- Human resources
- Finances
- Management of scholarships
Related to 1 course(s)
Baptiste Martin
Baptiste Martin has 20 years of experience in conflict and post-conflict contexts, including in Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR) and the G5 Sahel region. He has mainly worked on protection of civilians and stabilisation issues, with both humanitarian actors – including Première Urgence Internationale, MSF, UNHCR and OHCHR -, international peace operations and regional defense forces.
Baptiste has spent most of the last decade with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), both in the field and at UN headquarters in New York. In field missions, he has worked as a humanitarian officer, head of field office and stabilization team leader under UNMIS in South Sudan, as well as a protection of civilians adviser to MONUSCO in the DRC, MINUSCA in the CAR and MINUSMA in Mali. At UNHQ, he headed the Protection of Civilians Coordination Team of DPKO, where he led the development of the Policy on the Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping.
In 2017-2018, as a PoC Expert for the Swedish Folke Bernadotte Academy, he drafted the DPKO Protection of Civilians Handbook, acted as a mentor for the 2018 Swedish Viking exercise, drafted the Protection of civilians strategy of the Multinational Joint Taskforce (MNJTF) on Boko Haram and contributed to the development of the NATO Protection of civilians Concept.
In 2018-2020, he joined the OHCHR as a Senior Human Rights Officer and head of the G5 Sahel Joint Force IHL/IHRL compliance framework project, based in Mali.
In addition to joining the Center early 2021, Baptiste is currently supporting human rights compliance of national park rangers in the DRC.
He graduated from the Sorbonne University and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (SciencesPo).
Related courses
Benjamin Schmid
Ben is Course Director for our Executive Short Course in Non-Communicable Diseases in Humanitarian Settings.
Before this Ben was responsible for developing our MOOC in Operational Research for Humanitarians.
Prior to joining the Centre in January 2021, Ben worked in start-ups, multinationals and research institutions. His research interests include health systems, chronic diseases in humanitarian settings, evaluations of complex interventions and health-related behavioural change. He holds an MSc in Global Health from the University of Copenhagen with a specialisation in disaster risk management and a BA in healthcare management from the Management Centre Innsbruck.
Related courses
Related to 1 course(s)
Dr Erna Burai
Erna joined the Centre in August 2022. She holds a PhD from Central European University (CEU) in Political Science and International Relations, which she earned with a dissertation titled Responsibilities to Protect: accountability and responsiveness in protecting populations from atrocity crimes. As a theorist, she focuses on norms and norm contestation, responsibility in global governance and academic practices, pedagogy and academic writing.
Erna has more than a decade of experience in higher education and research. Before joining the Centre, she worked at the Geneva Graduate Institute on regional security architectures (2018-2022) and at Central European University on global norm evolution and the Responsibility to Protect (2012-2015). She held visiting research fellowships at the European University Institute and The Montreal Centre for International Studies. She led the International Relations program of a Hungarian higher education institution between 2011 and 2015.
She is committed to education and career development and currently serves as a member of the Early Career Development Group of the European International Studies Association (EISA). In addition to her native Hungarian, Erna is fluent in English and French and speaks Spanish.
Fields of interest
- Governance
- International Relations
- Norm contestation in international politics
- Responsibility and accountability in global governance
- Humanitarian action
- International organisations
- Academic practices
- Academic writing, critical pedagogy
Related courses
Related to 2 course(s)
Emilie Venables
Emilie is the Course Coordinator for the Addressing Sexual Violence in Conflict and Emergency Settings course. She also works as a Senior Humanitarian Advisor with the All Survivors Project, supporting research in Colombia, Afghanistan and the Central African Republic.
A trained social anthropologist, she has worked in contexts including South Africa, Kenya, Liberia, Senegal, DRC, Lebanon, Mozambique, Cambodia, Greece and Italy. Her research expertise includes migration; anthropology and humanitarian aid; Ebola; HIV/AIDS, and sexual violence. She has almost 20 years of experience designing, conducting and managing research in humanitarian contexts and teaching research methodologies.
Emilie worked for MSF between 2012 and 2019 in various roles, including as a field anthropologist, operational research manager and qualitative research advisor. She then worked as a Senior Operational Researcher with the ICRC for three years, including conducting research in South Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire and CAR on male perceptions of sexual violence and the role of Red Cross volunteers in research and data collection.
Emilie holds a BA in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, an MSc in Development Studies from SOAS and an MSc and PhD in African Studies from the University of Edinburgh. She is an Honorary Research Associate with the University of Cape Town, South Africa and holds an Honorary Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is also training as an integral coach through the Centre for Coaching in Switzerland.
Related courses
Helene Juillard
Helene has been working as an evaluator in the humanitarian sector for the past decade with a specific focus on cash and market based programming. She heads Key Aid Consulting‘s work on cash and market-based programming, as well as capacity development. She has supported the institutionalisation of cash and market-based programming for UNDP, UNHCR, IRC, Save the Children, CARE, Oxfam and World Vision, among others. She has also authored several related guidance documents, including the CaLP Programme Quality Toolbox and the PCMA guidance, and was involved in the Sphere Standards revision as a cash specialist. Helene is a member of the CaLP Technical Advisory Group and the Market in Crisis Advisory Group. Hélène also regularly designs and trains humanitarian practitioners on cash and market-based programming. She is a lecturer with Manchester University and Sciences Po Paris.
Related courses
Jonathan Polonsky
Jonathan is an epidemiologist with broad interests in infectious diseases and the Public Health Information Services (PHIS), a collection of informational needs that actors responding to humanitarian crises rely upon to ensure evidence- and needs-based programmes: Rapid Health Assessments, Early Warning, Alert, and Response Systems (EWARS), mortality estimation, malnutrition surveillance, vaccine campaign implementation and evaluation, and accessibility to essential health services. He holds an undergraduate degree in Human Sciences from Oxford University, a Masters degree in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and is studying for a PhD in Global Health from the University of Geneva.
Throughout his career, Jonathan has mixed research with emergency response actvities, primarily in humanitarian settings. Before joining the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies, he worked for Epicentre, a unit of Médecins Sans Frontières that specialises in epidemiology and research, and as a specialist in humanitarian epidemiology and outbreak response for the World Health Organization. In addition to being principal investigator on numerous operational and clinical research studies, he has served as epidemiology team lead during several high-impact outbreaks (including as WHO’s COVID-19 Data Analytics Team Lead), and as Health Cluster Information Manager in multiple crisis settings. He has worked in crisis-affected settings in over a dozen countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
He regularly teaches Masters and Diploma students in humanitarian epidemiology, outbreak response, and the use of the R statistical language for public health. He also teaches workshops on scientific communication and is the co-editor-in-chief of the humanitarian health journal ‘Conflict & Health’ (Impact Factor 4.6).
At the Centre, Jonathan is course director for the Health Emergencies in Large Populations (H.E.L.P.) course, jointly organised by ICRC and WHO. He is also a member of the PULSE survey team, the aim of which is to design and test community engagement interventions and evaluate their effect on vaccination uptake and management of vaccination programmes in humanitarian settings.
Laura Pasquero
Laura Pasquero joined the Centre in early 2021 after a collaboration started in 2020. She is the coordinator of the Executive Short Course “Sexual Violence in Conflict Settings and Emergencies“.
Laura has worked on sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response, protection, human trafficking and forced displacement within the human rights, humanitarian and international relief fields since 2005 in Kosovo, Colombia, Moldova, Morocco, Papua New Guinea, DRC, Iraq, Greece and Italy among other countries. She regularly supports Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and other international and national organisations in several contexts.
Laura graduated in International Relations from the University of Turin (Italy) and obtained a Master’s in Human Rights and Democratisation from the Global Campus of Human Rights in 2007. Laura qualified as an Independent Sexual Violence Advocate (ISVA) from the University of Worcester (UK) in 2016.
Alex Odlum
Alex joined the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies in March 2020 as Research Coordinator for the Humanitarian Encyclopedia project. His work experience spans research and analysis, needs assessment, information and knowledge management, and monitoring and evaluation, with humanitarian organisations including ACAPS, the International Organization for Migration, Lessons Learned Simulations and Training, and the Mixed Migration Centre. His research interests include organisational behaviour and decision making in humanitarian crises, coordination in humanitarian information systems, and migration policy and governance. Alex holds a Master of Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and Bachelors of Law and International Studies from the University of Adelaide.
Marianne Boddele
Marianne joined the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies in May 2019. She holds a Master 2 in Analysis of Countries in Crisis and Humanitarian Action and a Master in Trade and Sales. She has expertise in project coordination as well as in administration and marketing. With professional experience both in the private and NGOs/IOs sectors in the Geneva region, she is able to advise and run projects, whether they involve the administrative setting up of projects or the implementation of marketing strategies.
For the previous four years, Marianne was working for an international NGO leader in the non-formal education field, in charge of corporate communications. She worked on the creation and dissemination of printed and digital communications tools, editing and translation of various types of documents, social media moderation, event management, being involved in a multicultural and worldwide spread team.
Function
- General inquiries and prospective students
- Admissions
- Course administration
Mohammed Shafiq Mirzazada
Dr Shafiq Mirzazada, M.D., M.P.H, is a Researcher holding a Scholarship of Excellence (Boursiers d’excellence) awarded by the Swiss Government to pursue his academic and research work at the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies. He joined the centre in November 2022. Before joining the centre he worked as Deputy Minister Policy and Planning at the Ministry of Public Health of Afghanistan. He was the Director, Academic Projects Afghanistan for Aga Khan University. He also worked with the Aga Khan Health Service, Afghanistan as Chief Executive Officer, Country Program Director, Manager- Community Health Programs and National Program Officer. His expertise ranges from research to program development and implementation, capacity building, development of Human Resource for health, RMNCAH, Non-Communicable Diseases, Community Health, Population Health, and Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. He is Medical Doctor graduated from Balkh University, Faculty of Medicine in 1999. He is also a holder of Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from Saint Louis University, School of Public Health Missouri. USA (2008). He was offered the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to pursue his M.P.H in the United States.
Dr. Mirzazada is founding member of Afghanistan National Public Health Association and served as vice-president of the association during 2012-2013 and executive board member of the association. He also serves as member of Afghanistan Fulbright Association.
PUBLICATIONS
Gaffey MF, Ataullahjan A, Das JK, Mirzazada S, Tounkara M, Dalmar AA, Bhutta ZA. Researching the delivery of health and nutrition interventions for women and children in the context of armed conflict: lessons on research challenges and strategies from BRANCH Consortium case studies of Somalia, Mali, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Confl Health. 2020 Oct 20;14:69. http://doi:10.1186/s13031-020-00315-8 PMID: 33088339; PMCID: PMC7574460.
Mirzazada, S., Padhani, Z.A., Jabeen, S. et al. Impact of conflict on maternal and child health service delivery: a country case study of Afghanistan. Confl Health 14, 38 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-020-00285-x
Abbas, D.F., Mirzazada, S., Durocher, J. et al. Testing a home-based model of care using misoprostol for prevention and treatment of postpartum hemorrhage: results from a randomized placebo-controlled trial conducted in Badakhshan province, Afghanistan. Reprod Health 17, 88 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-020-00933-8
Das JK, Akseer N, Mirzazada S, Peera Z, Noorzada O, Armstrong CE, Mukhtar K, Naeem AJ, Bhutta ZA. Scaling up primary health services for improving reproductive, maternal, and child health: a multisectoral collaboration in the conflict setting of Afghanistan. BMJ. 2018 Dec 7;363:k4986. doi: 10.1136/bmj.k4986. PubMed PMID: 30530529; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6282736. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30530529/
Bhutta ZA, Bang A, Afsana K, Gyawali B, Mirzazada S, Jayatissa R. Rethinking community based strategies to tackle health inequities in South Asia. BMJ. 2018 Nov 29;363:k4884. doi: 10.1136/bmj.k4884. PubMed PMID: 30498009. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30498009/
David S, Gazi R, Mirzazada S, Siriwardhana C, Soofi S, Roy N. Conflict in South Asia and its impact on health. BMJ. 2017 Apr 11;357:j1537. doi: 10.1136/bmj.j1537. PubMed PMID: 28400380. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28400380/
RMNCAH and Nutrition in conflict settings: evidence synthesis and case study analysis to inform policy: Afghanistan and Pakistan
Sian Bowen
Sian has managed the communications at the Centre for four years. Prior to this, she worked in the humanitarian sector for 20 years, managing external relations for various organisations including IFRC, MSF and DNDi. She has a post graduate degree in journalism and a Masters in the Science of Communications Management. Sian specializes in strategic communications, advocacy, publications, brand management and organizational development.
Adrien Genoud
Adrien joined the Centre in September 2022 as Fundraising Manager. With over 20 years of experience, including ten years spent working on humanitarian projects in Iraq and Uganda, he worked in different fields of humanitarian aid, including Child Protection and Psychosocial Support Programmes. His various positions allowed him to successfully be in charge of grant management and develop strong fundraising abilities in the sector. Adrien holds a Certificate in Administration for International Aid and a Master of Advanced Studies in Humanitarian Action.
Fatima Morgan
Fatima re-joined the Centre in August 2021, having worked here for a humanitarian Distance Learning course from 2013 to 2016. Fatima owns a federal administrative diploma. She has worked for several companies in the private sector and non-profit organisations in favour of training, integration and reintegration of people with little or no Swiss qualification.
Besides her work at the Centre of Humanitarian Studies, Fatima volunteers at the Geneva Red Cross as a French teacher for people with a refugee permit or in a difficult situation.
Function:
· Course administration
· General inquiries
Ludovic Clément
Ludovic joined the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies in April 2021 as the new Distance Learning Specialist. His expertise lies in creating effective and entertaining e-Learning courses, digitising trainings and managing LMS. Ludovic started his career as a substitue teacher in Geneva’s primary schools before getting curious about the integration of new technologies within educational environments. This interest led him to get his Master degree in Advanced Learning and Teaching Technologies from the University of Geneva. Before joining the Centre, he worked with SMEs, big corporations and – most importantly to his values – international organisations.
Thuy Melich
Thuy is in charge of the management of course administration. She has joined the Geneve Centre of Humanitarian Studies in December 2016. With her Master of Business Administration degree, she has brought over six years of experience inadministration. Prior to joining team, she worked in the education sector, NGO and the United Nations.
Daniel Henao
Daniel Henao is a Medical Doctor with more than ten years of experience planning, implementing and monitoring evidence-based public health interventions in more than 15 countries in America, Africa and Middle-East. Daniel has worked in the public, development (UN) and humanitarian (ICRC) sectors at national and international levels. He co-authored more than 25 peer-reviewed publications and participated in academic initiatives with the Johns Hopkins University and the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp (Emerging Voices for Global Health).
Daniel is currently a PhD student in Global Health at the University of Geneva. His main research purpose is to understand why decentralization reforms of the health systems work or don’t work in fragile States.
Dr Joanna Bourke-Bartignoni
Joanna Bourke Martignoni is a Senior Researcher at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and an Affiliate of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute. Her research areas include the right to food, land commercialization, climate change, the right to education, and gender equality. She is a postdoctoral researcher and coordinator on the DEMETER (Droits et Egalité pour une Meilleure Economie de la Terre) multidisciplinary research for development project (2015–2021) that is examining land commercialization, gendered agrarian transformation and the right to food, with Cambodia and Ghana as case studies.
In addition to her research work, Dr Bourke Martignoni teaches courses on economic, social and cultural rights, international organisations, development, international humanitarian law, transitional justice and feminist theory at the University of Fribourg, the Geneva Academy and at the Australian National University.
She has also worked as a consultant to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. In addition, she has held positions as a programme officer on women’s rights at the World Organisation Against Torture and as a legal adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Dr Bourke Martignoni has degrees in South East Asian History, Political Science and Law from the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University, a Master’s in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and a PhD in law from the University of Fribourg. Her doctoral thesis examined the human right to education in the context of international development cooperation programmes with special reference to the role of the World Bank.
Dr Erica Moret
Dr Erica Moret is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Global Governance and Visiting Lecturer at the Department of International Relations/ Political Science at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. She is the coordinator and co-founder of the Geneva International Sanctions Network (GISN) and Associate Editor of the Journal of Global Security Studies. She holds a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford, where her research focused on the health and socioeconomic impacts of US sanctions on Cuba. A former diplomat, she is also a graduate of France’ Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA), where she specialised in European Union foreign and security policy.
Dr Moret is a leading expert on sanctions, and particularly on how these ever-popular instruments of foreign and security policy interface with humanitarian considerations. Her research has included that of lead/ sole author in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and policy publications on a range of EU foreign policy, global governance, international security, humanitarian and sanctions-related topics, including in relation to Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, and in connection with financial sector over-compliance or “de-risking”, cyber security, chemical weapons abuses, conflict resolution, nuclear non-proliferation, Brexit, disinformation, cryptocurrencies and informal governance.
She wrote one of the first peer-review articles that sought to examine the likely humanitarian ramifications of broadened EU sanctions on Syria and Iran (European Security, 2015) and has served as an independent expert and advisor on this wider subject to the EU and UN (including to the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, UNICEF and the Human Rights Council). Since 2015, she has organised consultations on the humanitarian situation in Syria on behalf of the Swiss government and in 2019-2020 she convened the “Compliance Dialogue on Syria-Related Humanitarian Payments”, a project run through the Graduate Institute; funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and supported by the European Commission, Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) and the World Bank (https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/index.php/communications/news/compliance-dialogue-syria-related-humanitarian-payments). She has provided tailored training on these areas for the UN Security Council’s high-level sanctions course (2019-20; of which she was a core teaching team member) and the University of the West Indies Diplomatic Academy (2020). She has spoken on the same subject at the Oxford University Strategic Studies Group and has taught the IHEID Masters lecture series on “International Sanctions in a Changing Geopolitical Order” since 2020. She has also advised the Canadian, French, German and UK governments on their sanctions policies, including providing evidence to Inquiries for both UK Houses of Parliament and serving on various high-level EU task forces.
From 1 October 2020, Dr Moret acts as Project Lead on a two-year Swiss Network of International Studies (SNIS)-funded project entitled “When Money Can’t Buy Food and Medicine: Banking Challenges in the International Trade of Vital Goods and their Humanitarian Impact in Sanctioned Jurisdictions” (https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/index.php/research-centres/global-governance-centre/when-money-cant-buy-food-and-medicine-banking-challenges). The project employs a mixed-method approach and works closely with a team of humanitarian actors, sanctions experts and international law scholars to explore challenges faced by medical and food companies, as well as humanitarian organisations, in operating in “unbanked” jurisdictions under sanctions and wider regulations. She is also employed on the European Research Council (ERC) Project “Bombs, Banks and Sanctions”, led by Professor Grégoire Mallard, to plan a Special Issue in a leading law or International Relations journal on the topic of sanctions, COVID-19, humanitarian access and international law. As a seasoned public speaker, Dr Moret chaired a webinar panel in June 2020 exploring the unique humanitarian challenges faced by heavily sanctioned countries in light of the new coronavirus pandemic (https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/covid-webinar-sanctions) and regularly moderates other high-level events, including lectures given by former heads of state and other leading public figures.
Lucas Dias Rodrigues Dos Santos
Lucas is a doctoral student fascinated by the ongoing reform of multi-lateralism, in an age of increasing multi-polarity. This is an outgrowth of his master’s thesis, about Brazil’s norm-shaping efforts concerning SDG16, to understand the methods and tools employed by non-traditional norm entrepreneurs. His PhD dissertation broaches the political struggles impelling changes in multilateral diplomatic practices in the previous decade, with a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) talks, the Paris Agreement and reform of the UN Secretary-General’s selection process.
Lucas is fulfilling a Teacher Assistant position with the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies.
Swetha Ramachandran
Swetha Ramachandran is a doctoral researcher at The Graduate Institute, Geneva (IHEID). Her dissertation analyses how western aid agencies create perverse incentives for local actors in Sierra Leone. She uses a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. She is currently a Consultant for the ILO, where she trains mid-career policymakers on evidence-based policymaking and research methods. She is an affiliate with the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) and is an active member of the Global Shapers network of the World Economic Forum (WEF). She previously served as a Teaching Assistant for the Masters’s programmes at IHEID and a Research Assistant for an SNSF-funded project on digital peacebuilding. Before commencing her PhD in 2020, Swetha worked as a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) professional for over two years and was based in eastern Sierra Leone, Lesotho, DRC and South Sudan. In her spare time, she enjoys badminton, running and blogging.
Fields of interest
- Aid financing
- Decolonising aid
- Localisation agenda
- Donor-recipient relations
- Project management in aid