Dr. Lisa Schirch is Senior Research Fellow for the Toda Peace Institute where she directs the Institute’s “Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding” programme to commission policy briefs and case studies on the impact of social media on conflict dynamics, to encourage civil society to participate in a “Digital Neighborhood Watch” programme that brings the skills of conflict resolution to social media, and in organising a 2020 Global Summit on Peacebuilding.

Schirch is also a Senior Fellow with the Alliance for Peacebuilding and Visiting Scholar at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. She holds a PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. She taught in the graduate programme on peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University for 23 years.

A former Fulbright Fellow in East and West Africa, Schirch is the author of ten books and numerous peer-reviewed chapters and journal articles. In 2018, Schirch published an edited book on The Ecology of Violent Extremism, an action guide for Synergizing Nonviolent Action and Peacebuilding with US Institute of Peace, and a report on Peacebuilding Perspectives on Social Media Impacts. In 2015, Schirch finished a 3 year project coordinating a global network to write a Handbook on Human Security: A Civil-Military-Police Curriculum and set of 40 peacebuilding case studies on Local Ownership in Security.

As a practitioner, Schirch has facilitated and participated in the design of national peace processes in Fiji and Afghanistan and written extensively about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.