Education

PhD, George Washington University
MA, Baylor University
BA, Baylor University

Profile

Timothy D. Sisk is Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development and International Peace (SDIP), a research and policy institute at the School.  He specializes in conflict prevention, management, and peacebuilding in fragile and post-war contexts.

More broadly, his research focuses on the nexus between democracy and governance and the management of conflict in deeply divided societies, especially those emerging from civil war.  He has conducted extensive research on the role of international and regional organizations, particularly the United Nations, in peace operations, peacemaking, and peacebuilding.   He is also the editor of the journal of the Academic Council of the United Nations System (ACUNS), Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations (Publisher: Lynne Rienner).   Sisk also serves as an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Geneva, Switzerland.

Sisk’s latest scholarly book is titled International Mediation in Civil Wars: Bargaining with Bullets (Routledge 2009).  He is the editor of the 2011 edited volume, Between Terror and Tolerance: Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Georgetown University Press).  Other recent books for which he is an editor are: From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding (with Anna Jarstad, Cambridge University Press 2008) and The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (with Roland Paris, Routledge 2009).

Prior to joining the University of Denver in 1998, he was a Program Officer in the Grant Program of the United States Institute of Peace in Washington and, prior to that, a staff member for a United States Senator.  Sisk earned a Ph.D. “with distinction” in political science (comparative politics, research methods) from The George Washington University, in 1992, and an MA in International Journalism (1984) and a BA in Foreign Service and German (1982) from Baylor University.

Research and Expertise

International peace and security; negotiations and peace processes; UN peace operations and post-settlement implementation of peace agreements; conflict amelioration, governance and human development. 

Courses

INTS 3030: Sport and International Politics: Power, Culture and Capitalism
INTS 4501: Comparative Politics: States and Societies in the 21st Century
INTS 4594: Civil Wars and International Responses I: Causes and Consequences
INTS 4595: Civil Wars and International Responses II: Post-War Peacebuilding
INTS 4705: Democratization in Africa: Between Liberation and Consolidation

Programs, Centers and Institutes

Center for Sustainable Development and International Peace

Geneva Center for Security Policy