The International Issues Discussion (IID) series at Toronto Metropolitan University will present its second talk of the Winter 2025 series, “The Fall of Assad and the Future of Syria.”

Our guest will be Dr. Marie-Joëlle Zahar, Professor of Political Science, Director of the Research Network on Peace Operations and Fellow at the Centre for International Research and Studies at the Université de Montréal. She is a 2023-2026 Pierre-Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow and a non-resident Senior Fellow with the International Peace Institute. Between 2013 and 2015 and in 2024, she served as Senior Expert on Process-Design and Power Sharing on the Standby Team of Mediation Experts at the UN Department of Peacebuilding and Political Affairs. In 2017, she was a senior expert in the Office of the Special Envoy of the United Nations for Syria. A graduate of McGill University, her research interests span the politics of conflict-resolution and peacebuilding. She is a non-resident Senior Fellow with the International Peace Institute and held a number of visiting appointments, including at the Tampere Peace Research Institute (Finland), the Université Lyon II (France), the Institut d’études politiques de Lyon (France), and the Centre d’études pour le monde Arabe Moderne, Université Saint-Joseph (Lebanon).Professor Zahar is author, co-author or editor of more than seventy academic books, articles, and chapters including Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World (Lynne Rienner 2012-, co-authored with Rex Brynen, Pete W. Moore and Bassel F. Salloukh) and Intra-State Conflict, Government and Security: Dilemmas of Deterrence and Assurance (Routledge 2008, co-edited with Stephen Saideman). Her work has appeared in International Studies Review, International Negotiations, Global Governance, the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Critique Internationale, and International Peacekeeping as well as in multiple edited volumes on conflict resolution and peace implementation.

Her talk will be held in-person on Wednesday, February 12 between 6:30 and 8:30 pm in ENG 103 (the Vari Engineering Building, 245 Church Street, Toronto).

 Attendance is free and everyone is welcome.  

Founded in 2005, the IID is a non-partisan, student-led forum designed to engage all members of the TMU community on major events and issues in contemporary global affairs through reasoned, objective, and scholarly discourse. For further details about the IID and our series please see http://iid.kislenko.com  or contact the IID student leaders at iidseries@gmail.com