MEET OUR TEAM

Through the Global Governance Innovation Platform, our interdisciplinary team applies expertise in global governance and data visualization to deliver actionable insights and solutions that help UN Member States and organizations strengthen multilateral decision-making.

UNU-CPR

Dr. David Passarelli

Director

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

Global GovernanceMigrationStrategic Foresight

Dr. David Passarelli is Director (D2) of the UNU Centre for Policy Research where he bears overall responsibility for the direction, organization, and administration of the Centre’s research. He is also a member of UN University’s Senior Management Group, and serves as UNU’s representative to the UN High-Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP). Between 2022-2023, Dr. Passarelli led the Secretariat of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism (HLAB). His research has been commissioned by several influential organizations, including UNICEF, the UN Environment Programme, the UN Development Coordination Office (DCO), and the UK Ministry of Defence’s Development, Concepts, and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) with financial support from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). His research and policy work predominantly focus on global governance, migration, strategic foresight, international development, and global finance. He holds a Doctorate in International Development from the University of Oxford. He has held several roles at UNU, including as Executive Officer and Secretary of the governing board (2017-2020) and Chief of Staff to UNU’s Under-Secretary-General (2013-2016). He established and led the University’s Office of Academic Affairs between 2011-2013. He has also held research positions at the Institute on Globalization, Culture, and Mobility, and at the Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration, and lectured at Temple University, Tokyo.

Irfana Khatoon

Economic Governance Researcher

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

International Financial Architecture (IFA)Economic Governance Reforms

Irfana Khatoon is an Economic Governance Researcher at UNU-CPR, where she focuses on advancing research and policy initiatives in international financial architecture (IFA) and economic governance reforms. She also supports the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) with tracking IFA-related policy development.

Prior to her current position, Irfana was a Junior Fellow at UNU-CPR, where she contributed to tracking IFA-related developments for the High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism (HLAB). She also interned at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS), where she worked on the Regional Integration Knowledge System (RIKS), conducted research on Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), and contributed to developing an index to measure the strength of investor protections offered by BITs.

She has gained research experience through internships and academic projects. At CEU, her thesis focused on the impact of the 2014 sanctions on foreign direct investment in Russia, while her thesis at Sussex explored the geopolitics underlying sectarian conflict in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. Additionally, she gained research experience during her undergraduate studies through an internship at Mayer Brown in Hong Kong.

Dr. Michael Franczak

Senior Researcher in Multilateralism and Global Governance

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

Climate FinanceDevelopment FinanceInternational Financial Architecture

Michael Franczak is a Senior Researcher in Multilateralism and Global Governance at UNU-CPR and an expert on climate and development finance and reform of the international financial architecture. Michael also holds appointments as a Visiting Fellow at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania and as Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University. From 2022-2024, Michael was a Research Fellow at the International Peace Institute, where he led research on multilateral climate finance and supported small-island states in UN Climate Change negotiations. Michael has also worked for the UNFCCC’s Nairobi Work Programme on adaptation and food security issues and served as an advisor to the Republic of Maldives on loss and damage finance. Prior to IPI, Michael completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania (2020-2022) and at Yale University (2018-2020), where he also taught in the History department. Trained as a historian of international economic relations, he is the author of Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s (Cornell University Press, 2022) and many scholarly articles and book chapters. He holds a PhD in History from Boston College and a BA in History from the University of Michigan.

Jack Durrell

Communications Specialist

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

Strategic CommunicationsMedia RelationsContent Strategy

Jack Durrell leads communications initiatives at UNU-CPR, developing strategic messaging and media engagement to amplify the Centre’s research impact and policy influence across global platforms.

Tess Pilkington

Communications Officer

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

Digital CommunicationsSocial MediaContent Creation

Tess Pilkington manages digital communications and content creation at UNU-CPR, ensuring effective dissemination of research findings and policy recommendations to diverse stakeholder audiences.

Contributors

Stella Ladi

Senior Fellow (non-resident)

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

International SecurityEmerging TechnologyAI & Military Decision-making

Prof. Stella Ladi has a dual affiliation at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and at Panteion University in Athens. She is the co-editor of European Political Science of the ECPR. At Panteion University, she serves as Director of the Centre for Political Research. At QMUL, she is a member of the leadership team of the Global Policy Institute.

From January to July 2024, she was an Academic Visitor at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. She is a research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) and a Research Associate at the Hellenic Observatory, LSE. She previously worked as a lecturer at the University of Sheffield and the University of Exeter. She has also been a Research Fellow at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI). She has acted as a public policy expert at the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of the Aegean, Greece. Her research interests include crisis and EU policy, Europeanization, multilateralism, global public policy, transnational administration and the role of experts in public policy. She has published in journals such as Journal of European Integration, EPS, JCMS, Policy & Society, Regulation & Governance, Public Administration, West European Politics, New Political Economy, Comparative European Politics and Political Studies Review. She is the co-author of Capitalising on Constraint: Bailout Politics in Eurozone Countries, Manchester: Manchester University Press, with Moury, C., Cardoso, D. and Gago, A.

Professor Stella Ladi leads Multilateralism-in-crises, an independent research project funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation and hosted at the Centre for Policy Research at Panteion University in Athens. The project asks how multilateral institutions perform in periods of crisis and how they can be equipped for future global challenges. Her work connects to the GGI as it is in line with one of the aims of UNU-CPR, which is to promote and expand knowledge on the multilateral system in view of addressing future global challenges.

 

Dr. Caroline Dunton

Former Senior Researcher in Multilateralism and Global Governance

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

UN PeacekeepingSecurity CouncilCanadian Foreign Policy

Dr. Caroline Dunton served as a Senior Researcher in Multilateralism and Global Governance at UNU-CPR. From 2024 to 2025, she was the Skelton-Clark Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen’s University in Canada, where she taught courses on Canadian foreign policy, Canadian politics, and the United Nations. She worked for Global Affairs Canada as a Senior Policy Analyst in Foreign Policy Planning, where she was responsible for the development of Canada’s feminist foreign policy. She was also the Cadieux-Léger Fellow in Foreign Policy Research in 2018-2019. Dr. Dunton was a Research Associate at the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa, where she received her PhD in 2022. She holds MA degrees from the University of Ottawa and George Washington University. She has published widely on United Nations peacekeeping, the history and practice of the United Nations Security Council, gender and international development, and Canadian foreign policy.

Dr. Carmen Hull

Principal Investigator, XYZ DataLabs

Assistant Professor, Northeastern University

Expertise

Data VisualizationVisual CognitionDiagramming

Dr. Hull is an Assistant Professor in the Data Visualization and Information Design Department at Northeastern University in Boston.

Eilish Zembilci

Research Associate

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

Migration and displacementClimate adaptation and environmental security

Eilish Zembilci is a Research Associate in Multilateralism and Global Governance at UNU-CPR. Ms. Zembilci is also a Ph.D. student in the joint Public Policy and Political Science program at Duke University. Her research examines the political consequences of migration and displacement across local, national, and international levels, with a particular focus on how refugee hosting shapes regime strategy, domestic backlash, and interstate bargaining in competitive authoritarian contexts. She is especially interested in how demographic change, national identity and policy attribution influence political behavior, opposition mobilization, and public support for governing coalitions.

Her broader interests span global environmental politics, environmental security, climate adaptation, and the geopolitics of development and the energy transition, as well as the evolving role of U.S. foreign assistance. To that end, she has produced policy analysis for a range of development and policy institutions, including the CSIS Global Food and Water Security Program, World Food Program USA, the U.S. Agency for International Development and Department of State, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the UN International Organization for Migration, and Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability.

Ms. Zembilci holds a Master of Public Policy and certificate in International Development Policy from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, where she was a Carlucci Fellow in Security Studies, and a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from the George Washington University, with a concentration in global public health and a minor in sustainability studies.

Meghana Narayana

Research Assistant

Northeastern University

Expertise

Software DevelopmentData VisualizationWebsite Development

A Master’s in Computer Science student at Northeastern University and software developer specializing in modern web applications and user experience design.

Dr. Maria Ivanova

Director, School of Public Policy

Northeastern University

Expertise

Environmental PolicyGlobal GovernanceInternational Organizations

Dr. Maria Ivanova is the Director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. She is an expert on global environmental governance and international organizations, with extensive research on the United Nations Environment Programme and environmental treaty regimes.

Maleeha Abrar

Former Global Governance Research Assistant (Co-op)

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

Development finance

Maleeha Abrar served as a Global Governance Research Assistant (Co-op) at the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research from June to December 2025.

Maleeha holds a Master of Public Policy from Northeastern University, with a focus on development finance, institutional accountability, and inclusive policymaking. At UNU-CPR, she contributed to the Global Governance Innovation (GGI) Platform, supporting research and analysis aimed at strengthening equity and cooperation in international policy.

Her previous experience includes roles at the United Nations Development Programme in Pakistan, where she worked on sustainable finance and programme impact evaluation, and at the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan, where she contributed to a data-driven taxation reform project using AI tools. She also served as a marketing and communications intern at Endeavor Pakistan, building international networks within the startup and venture capital ecosystem.

Maleeha earned her Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).

Qinge Vina Li

Former Strategic Communications Associate

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

Strategic Communications

Qinge Vina Li was a Strategic Communications Associate at the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR), where she drove visibility for the Centre’s initiatives through integrated marketing and media strategies.

Prior to joining UNU-CPR, Ms. Li specialised in cross-cultural communication and localisation strategy at an international PR consulting agency, helping global brands establish a presence in new markets. She supported global consumer goods brands with media relations, event planning, and the development of marketing campaigns. Her work emphasised audience engagement and content creation across diverse platforms.

Qinge holds a Master of Science in Strategic Communication from Columbia University and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Management Science and International Studies from the University of California, San Diego. Her capstone project focused on developing omnichannel marketing strategies to help a high-profile consumer brand close perception gaps with younger audiences.

Manushi Sharma

Former Effective Multilateralism Research Assistant (Co-op)

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

International Cooperation Planetary Health and Climate JusticeGovernance and Financing

Manushi Sharma served as an Effective Multilateralism Research Assistant (Co-op) at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, where she supported the development and launch of the Global Governance Innovation (GGI) Platform.

Manushi is a trained pharmacist and health economist with over a decade of experience in international cooperation, specializing in health systems, environmental management, and mixed-methods policy evaluation. Her work spans the Asia-Pacific, sub-Saharan Africa, and North America.

She has worked with prominent organizations, including the US Partnership for Education and Sustainable Development, the Thai Ministry of Public Health, The George Institute for Global Health, Collaborating for Resilience, and the Public Health Foundation of India. In these roles, she has managed and led multistakeholder projects collaborating with academia, UN bodies, governments, civil society, and the private sector.

In 2022, Manushi was awarded the Atlas Corps Fellowship, where she employed participatory action research and adaptive learning approaches to mitigate conflict in environmental resource management and climate justice in resource-constrained settings. She holds a Master of Public Policy from Northeastern University.

Dr. Jason Hartwig

Former Research Associate

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

Conflict ProcessesState-buildingSecurity Sector Reform

Jason Hartwig is a former Research Associate at the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR), where he supported the Centre’s Global Governance Innovation Platform. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where his research focuses on conflict processes and state-building at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics. His dissertation project examines how violence between community groups is managed during civil wars through what he terms security orders. Previously, Hartwig served as an armor officer in the US Army and in civilian security sector reform positions with extensive fieldwork in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

Aleksis Oreschnikoff

Former Research Associate

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

Science PolicyArctic SecurityResearch Infrastructures

Aleksis Oreschnikoff was a Research Associate at UNU-CPR, where he contributed his expertise in science policy to the Global Governance Innovation Platform.

He is also a PhD candidate in Political Science (International Relations) at the University of Helsinki and a Research Fellow at the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN). He serves on the boards of the Finnish Arctic Society and Nordic Ocean Watch Finland and is affiliated with the Svalbard Social Science Initiative. His doctoral research, ‘Research Infrastructures and Arctic Security’, investigates the science-security nexus in the Arctic by examining how epistemic infrastructures, threat perceptions and geopolitical presence intertwine.

He is broadly interested in science-policy interaction, infrastructure and technology, security and governance. Aleksis has worked as a science-policy expert at the Finnish Academy for Science and Letters, as a public policy consultant for Finnish ministries and agencies, as a rapporteur for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting and Committee for Environmental Protection (ATCM and CEP), and held various positions in public, private and third sector organizations in Helsinki, Copenhagen, Paris, Oslo and St. Petersburg.

He holds a Master’s degree in European and Nordic Studies from the University of Helsinki (2020) and a Bachelor’s in Northern Studies from the University of Tromsø – the Arctic University of Norway (2017). Before academia, Aleksis worked in the maritime sector and completed conscript service in the Finnish Navy.

Dr. Adam McCauley

Senior Fellow (non-resident)

UNU Centre for Policy Research

Expertise

International SecurityEmerging TechnologyAI & Military Decision-making

Dr. Adam McCauley is a Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR) where he supports the Centre’s Global Governance Innovation Platform. Dr. McCauley is a journalist, academic and policy advisor. He is currently a Senior Policy Advisor at the Department of National Defence in Canada where he conducts research and analysis on a range of security issues. His current research explores the implications of Artificial Intelligence on military and political decision-making. Dr. McCauley is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, where he lectures on international security, emerging technology and military/defense policy. Previously, he was a lecturer at both the University of Oxford and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he taught across a range of subjects including international relations, international security and conflict, and political philosophy. Dr. McCauley co-founded the Oxford Policy Dialogue to facilitate knowledge exchange between scholars of international security and government agencies in 2016. He also continues to publish widely in international media, including The New York Times, The Atlantic and TIME Magazine. He completed his BA in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Toronto; MSc in Journalism from Columbia University; and MPhil and DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford.

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