George A. Lopez is one of the world’s ranking experts on economic sanctions, peacebuilding, the United Nations and various peace related issues. He is the Hesburgh Professor of Peace Studies Emeritus at the Kroc Institute, University of Notre Dame.
From September 2013 – July 2015 Lopez served as the Vice President of the Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding at the United States Institute of Peace, Washington, DC. From October 2010 through July 2011, he served on the United Nations Panel of Experts for monitoring and implementing UN Sanctions on North Korea. He won and held a Senior Jennings Randolph Fellowship at USIP in 2009-10. As a senior research associate at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York City, he assisted in the Council’s post- 9-11 public programming throughout the US.
Since 1992, Lopez has advised various international agencies and governments regarding sanctions issues, ranging from limiting their humanitarian impact to the design of targeted financial sanctions. He has written 35 articles and book chapters, as well as written authored/ edited six books [often with David Cortright], including The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN Strategies in the 1990s and Putting Teeth in the Tiger: Improving the Effectiveness of Arms Embargoes [with Michael Brzoska]. Lopez-Cortright research detailing the unlikely presence of WMDs in Iraq appeared before the war in “Disarming Iraq” in Arms Control Today [Sept 2002] and then after the war in “Containing Iraq: the Sanctions Worked” in Foreign Affairs [July/August 2004]. For 2015-16 he has undertaken a major research project with United Nations University entitled The Sanctions Enterprise: Assessing a Quarter-Century of UN Action for Peace, Security and Human Rights.
In 1986 he came to the University of Notre Dame as a founding faculty member of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies being appointed to the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., chair in Peace Studies in 2007. Lopez created and has served as Director of the Kroc Institute’s annual Summer Institute on Teaching Peace in the 21st Century since its inception in 2009. This program has assisted the development of peace research and studies programs in over 100 higher education institutions across five continents.
Lopez’s earlier contributions to peace and security scholarship and practice include chairing the Selection Committee of the Research and Writing Grants Committee of the MacArthur Foundation’s Program in Peace and International Cooperation from 1988 through 1998. From May-December 1997, he served as interim executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and then chaired its Board of Directors until June 2003, presiding over the moving of the hands of The Doomsday Clock in 2002.
In May 2016 he was named a Judge for the groundbreaking MacArthur Foundation Program 100&Change https://www.100andchange.org.
In November 2016 he was named a Senior Adviser to The Sentry, and The Enough Project, Washington, DC. In February 2017 he received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Peace Studies Section of the International Studies Association.