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Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations Home | About | Fellows | Events | Links 2007-2008 Fellows
Currently, I am working on a longer term project that discusses the role of religion in history, specifically the Judea-Christian-Muslim view of history, and to see how political development, law and religion interact. My thesis contends that law in fact is a product of religion and that political development has followed a direct path to a specific level of achievement. I believe that through a better understanding of religion we can realize a more peaceful world.
2008-2009 Fellows
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JON GANDOMI is currently a second year Master’s student at the Woodrow Wilson School studying international relations. He finished his B.A in international studies at the University of Arizona after spending his junior year in Kazakhstan. Jon worked for a year in Russia with the Generation of Hope, a youth empowerment community service project, and led similar projects in eight countries of the former Soviet Union and South America. His professional experience includes surveying small business owners in Central Asia’s Ferghana Valley, working on the trial of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and interning with the U.S. delegation to the UN Security Council. Jon is a member of Princeton’s Religious Life Council and a Resident Graduate Student at Whitman College. He is also a member of the Baha’i Faith and hopes to work in international security and conflict resolution.
ALI HAMOUDI – Prior to my arrival at WWS, I had been working with the Government of Iraq during a period in which it was forced to grapple with the role religion has on societal relations and consequentially international relations. I observed first hand the differing perspectives on the role of religion in governance through the formation of the constitution. I also observed the international concerns present which addressed the potentially negative outcomes in involving religion in public life. Being connected to various Muslim nations in the Middle East (spending a significant amount of time in Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan and having Iraqi citizenship), as well as being connected to the United States (born in the U.S.), I have focused my past and potential life’s work on trying to find a solution to bring about a peaceful world that does not include the destruction of religious belief. I have co-founded and managed a small media production company that promotes creative production of Muslim youth from around the world. In this capacity, I acted as the research director for a documentary film titled “New Medina: Muslims in the Bible Belt.” The film through countless interviews came to the conclusion that religious societies have more in common than popularly perceived.
MANAV A. LALWANI is a junior in the Politics Department from Secaucus, New Jersey. His academic interests include international relations and political economy with a regional focus on South and East Asia. He is Co-President of the Princeton Hindu Satsangam and a fellow on the Religious Life Council. Manav also enjoys dancing, traveling, and the outdoors.
CELENE AYAT M. LIZZIO is a senior undergraduate in the Near Eastern Studies Department and a first year in the Teacher Preparation Certificate Program at Princeton. She is a graduate of the United World Colleges, an international educational movement aimed at promoting cross-cultural exchange and channeling the energy of young and aspiring public servants. She is a board member on Princeton’s Student Volunteers’ Council as well as fellow of Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-determination. She has received several grants and study awards, including the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Projects for Peace to found the Salaam Initiatives, a community-building project leading enrichment activities in orphan support homes and managing a provisional workshop manufacturing “Peace-Shirts” with messages promoting interfaith tolerance. She has interned at the Social Research Center in Cairo (2005), at the SHOAH foundation for combating racism and bigotry in Los Angeles (2004), at REDES SOCIAIS a Brazilian foundation for advocacy in the area of education and child-rights (2003), and at HOBY (1998-2000) in her home state of Pennsylvania, organizing leadership conferences for high school students. Celene is a wife and mother in addition to being a member of the academic community.
CHRISTOPHER MACPHERSON is a second year graduate student at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he studies a range of issues from domestic policy to post-conflict development and counterinsurgency. Before coming to the Woodrow Wilson School, he held a variety of positions within the Department of Defense and served on the National Security Council at the White House. This past summer he worked in the Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict under the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, where he researched private security companies and helped develop the Department’s counterinsurgency and irregular warfare policy. This semester Chris is working on a graduate policy task force on Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan with Bob Perito from the United States Institute for Peace (USIP).
AVI MILLER – I am currently a philosophy major at Princeton University. My academic interests are quite broad, ranging from and Greek philosophy and Jewish thought to psychology and film. From a young age, I have been particularly fascinated with the study of theology and otherwise most passionate about studies in political theory, philosophy of religion, and metaphysics. I spent my semester of advanced standing in yeshiva in Jerusalem studying Bible and Talmud. This past summer, I worked at a Jerusalem research institute/think tank called the Shalem Center, where I was inspired to apply religious, moral, and philosophical study to inform practical Israeli politics. There, I researched medieval Jewish mystical literature as well as Plato’s dialogues. I also helped edit their journal, Hebraic Political Studies. The internship opened my eyes to the interrelationship between religion and politics, inspired me to continue work of this kind, and perhaps even gave me a promise of progress I still hold on to. Aside from my experiences in Israel, I would also like to add that being a participant of Princeton in Beijing also stimulated an interest in East Asia. Currently, I am enjoying a seminar called Political Theology taught by Professor Batnizky. 
ANDREA NEDIC – Having spent a large portion of her life between Belgrade, Tokyo and Princeton, she has developed an interest in the international relations of Balkan states as well as those of other regions with intricate heterogeneity of faiths. Her broad interests lie in movements of political self determination motivated by religious separatism, specifically as related to the European integration process. She is currently a second year Ph.D. student with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from Rutgers University and contributes to Forbes College as a resident graduate student.
NEALIN PARKER is a Master in Public Affairs candidate at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She spent the four years prior to graduate school working in post-conflict transitions and conflict prevention in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Most recently she worked for the Peace and Reintegration Board in Aceh, Indonesia implementing the peace agreement between the GAM rebels and national government. She is interested in religious concepts of post-conflict punishment and reconciliation. 
JONA REPISHTI is a second year MPA candidate in International Relations at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Born in Albania, Jona lived in the capital city, Tirana through the gripping collapse of a regime considered the last beacon of communist ideology in Eastern Europe. She escaped much of the national turmoil when her father was appointed as a diplomat at the UN headquarters in New York, but she was able to return to Albania in time to witness another kairotic moment – the collapse of the pyramid schemes and the subsequent civil strife in 1997-98. Since then, much of her life has been split between Albania and U.S. After graduating from Middlebury College in 2004 with a degree in International Studies she returned to her country to become the founder and Director of the Mjaft Foundation, a small but dynamic organization working to support youth employment, microfinance, education, and philanthropy. Prior to this, she worked at the Albanian Mission to the United Nations in New York, and spent her time lobbying for Albania 's seat in ECOSOC and mingling with worldly diplomats. In 2002 she assisted the Council of Europe's Observation Mission in Kosovo as a short-term election observer. She has wide experiences with youth employment, empowerment and activism and has worked with the Balkan YouthLink Leadership Institute and UNICEF. In addition, Jona has published articles and given interviews for international and Albanian media outlets including NPR, Deutsche Welle, BBC, Koha Jone, Southeast European Times, Biznesi, etc. She spent her summer internship in Geneva, Switzerland working with UNDP on issues of humanitarian reform, gender and early recovery.
LEANNE SMITH has been practicing law and public policy across a variety of fields since graduating from ANU, primarily international law and human rights law. She has worked as a clerk to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory, for Human Rights NGOs in Indonesia, for the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) on anti-discrimination and indigenous issues and for the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions. She then joined the Australian Foreign Service where she worked on policy and legal issues including: disarmament; human rights and refugee law; Pakistan/Afghanistan relations; law of the sea and corporate planning. Leanne spent three years (2001-2004) as the Australian Second Secretary in the Balkans covering FRY (Serbia and Montenegro), Kosovo, Macedonia and Romania. From 2005-2007 Leanne was seconded from the Foreign Ministry to the UN in Afghanistan where she worked first as a human rights field of ficer for UNAMA and then for OHCHR and UNDP as an international technical adviser to the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
ZVI SMITH is a Junior in the Politics Department from Los Angeles. His academic focus is political theory and international relations, concentrating in the Middle East where he lived for two years before attending Princeton. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the undergraduate magazine American Foreign Policy and a member of the Religious Life Council. In his spare time, he loves to travel, hike, read trashy fantasy novels, and catch up on all the movies he misses during the semester.
JOSHUA W. WALKER is a doctoral candidate at Princeton University focusing on international relations and security studies. Joshua is a graduate fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and with the Bradley foundation. Most recently Joshua served as a guest fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations working on the role of the U.S.-Turkish alliance. Prior to Princeton, Joshua completed a Master’s from Yale University in International Relations and received two graduate certificates in International Security and Middle East studies. Joshua completed a year long Fulbright Fellowship in Ankara, Turkey where he researched this country’s foreign and security policy, particularly its European Union aspirations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership, in relation to questions about its national and cultural identity. He received his BA from the University of Richmond in Leadership Studies and International Economics. Joshua’s interest in International Relations stems from his 15 years spent living overseas in Sapporo, Japan where he calls home and his family still resides. Beyond academia he has had the privilege of working for the U.S. State Department both at the Embassy in Ankara and in Washington, and for GE Financial Assurances. In addition, Joshua is a columnist for the Turkish Daily News and his writings have appeared in numerous academic and international forums.
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