Dr. Sean Byrne

Dr. Byrne is a native of Ireland. He is founding director of the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at St. Paul's College, as well as head of Canada’s first PhD program in peace and conflict studies and the joint MA program in peace and conflict studies. Dr. Byrne is a recipient of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) research grant (2009-2012), co-recipient of a SSHRC research grant (2005-2008) and a United States Institute of Peace research grant (1997) to explore the role of external economic aid in the peace-building process in Northern Ireland.

His publications include 65 articles and book chapters, as well as seven books, including: Growing Up in a Divided Society: The Influence of Conflict on Belfast Schoolchildren; Reconcilable Differences: Turning Points in Ethnopolitical Conflicts; Handbook of Conflict Analysis and Resolution and The International Fund for Ireland and the European Union Peace I Fund: Building the Peace Dividend in Northern Ireland.

Byrne is a former vice-president of the international sector of the Society for Professionals in Dispute Resolution and served as editor-in-chief of the journal Peace and Conflict Studies.

Dr. Maureen Flaherty

Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at St. Paul's College in August 2011. She came to the Mauro Centre following more than thirty years as a front-line social worker, therapist, consultant and educator specializing crisis and trauma recovery, intimate partner abuse, and innovations in social development.

Dr. Flaherty worked with child protection, foster care and adoption in Alberta and Saskatchewan before moving to Winnipeg to earn a master’s degree in social work at the University of Manitoba. She worked at Klinic Community Health Centre first as a counsellor and then the clinical director/consultant for both Klinic and Manitoba's Family Violence Prevention Program. She also worked on a CIDA-funded project in community development and education in Ukraine, Russia, and with a project in China.

Dr. Flaherty has worked as an instructor for both the Inner City and Aboriginal-focused social work programs and co-facilitated the SPARC Summer Institute on Storytelling for Peace and Human Rights in summer, 2010. Dr. Flaherty earned her PhD in peace and conflict studies in 2011 from the University of Manitoba. Her research interests include gendered perspectives in interpersonal violence, narrative, peace education, and community development all in the processes of peaceful living.

Dr. Jessica Senehi

Dr. Senehi is assistant professor with the PhD program in peace and conflict studies and associate director of the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at St. Paul's College. With Sean Byrne, she co-directed The North American Conflict Resolution Program: A Cross Cultural, Interdisciplinary Experiment in Peacebuilding student exchange sponsored by a 2003-2007 grant from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. She has completed drafts of two manuscripts, The Process of Storytelling: Building Community, Building Peace, and VIOLENCE: Intervention and Prevention. With two other academics, she is assessing the Jerusalem Stories Project. She is the organizer and director of Winnipeg’s annual International Storytelling Festival, as well as the academic institute Storytelling for Peacebuilding and Renewing Community (SPARC) that is situated in the Mauro Centre.

Dr. Hamdesa Tuso

Dr. Tuso joined the Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice in 2011.

Over the past 20 years, he has been involved in a broad range of activities related to social change and conflicts in cross-cultural settings. He participated in the evolution of five different organizations — from refugee support units to a scholarly society in the Horn of Africa. He is the founder of the Oromo Studies Association, served on the board of the National Forum on Immigration Refugees and Citizenship and formed the Shanachaa Jaarsummaa to resolve the 10 year-old conflict within the Oromo Liberation Front leadership.

Professor Tuso is the founder and director of the Africa Working Group and the editor of the online Journal of Conflict Management in Africa.

Dr. Tuso has taught at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution of George Mason University, Antioch University and Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. During the 2006-2007 academic year, he was the distinguished visiting Esau professor at Menno Simons College, an affiliate of University of Winnipeg.