Dr. Abiodun Williams

Dr. Abiodun Williams was appointed Associate Dean of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in November 2007.  From 2001 to 2007, he served as Director of the Strategic Planning Unit in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary General.  In that capacity, he advised Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon on a full range of strategic issues including UN reform, international migration, and peacebuilding.  He also had lead responsibility for the UN’s international research and training institutes.  He had three peacekeeping assignments as Special Assistant to the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1999-2000.); Special Assistant to the Representative of the Secretary-General in Haiti (1998-2000); and Political and Humanitarian Affairs Officer, UN Preventive Deployment Force in Macedonia (1994-1998).
           
Dr. Williams also possesses experience with private foundations, having served as the founding Director of the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program at the Institute of International Education from 2000 to 2001. 

His previous academic appointments include: Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University (1988-1994); Visiting Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department and the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, University of Rochester (1987-1988); Teaching Assistant and Lecturer at Tufts University (1984-1987).

Dr. Williams is Vice-Chair of the Academic Council on the UN System, Member of the Editorial Board of Global Governance, Honorary Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, and Advisor to the Club of The Hague on the future of Refugee and Migration Policy.   He has served on the International Board of Directors of the United World Colleges, the Board of Trustees of Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific, the Board of Directors of Jesuit International Volunteers, and the Advisory Board of QSI International School of Skopje.  He has published widely on conflict prevention, peacekeeping operations and multilateral negotiations.  His publications include Preventing War: The United Nations and Macedonia (2000), and  Many Voices: Multilateral Negotiations in the World Arena (1992).

In 1990, Dr. Williams was awarded a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and the Constantine E. McGuire Medal by Georgetown University in 1991.  He won the School of Foreign Service’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 1992.  Dr. Williams holds an M.A. (Honors) in English Language and Literature from Edinburgh University, an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy and a Ph.D. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.