George A. Lopez
George A. Lopez (LinkedIn) is the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute of the Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame.
Lopez has a deep commitment to nurturing the development of high-quality peace studies and peacebuilding education at the collegiate level. He was founding director of the Kroc Institute’s Summer Institute on Teaching Peace in the 21st Century (2007-21) which assisted the development of peace research and studies programs in more than 100 higher education institutions across five continents.
From 2013-15, he was the Vice President of the Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, D.C. While at USIP, Lopez assisted in the creation of the Global Campus online peacebuilding education platform. He has accompanied the development of university-level peacebuilding programs in Canada, Poland, Colombia, and Ecuador, the latter as a Fulbright Senior Specialist.
Since 1992, Lopez has advised the United Nations, various international agencies, and governments on economic sanctions issues, ranging from assessing their humanitarian impact to the design of targeted financial sanctions. He has written more than 50 articles and book chapters and authored or edited six books (often with David Cortright) on various aspects of sanctions and served as a member of the United Nations Panel of Experts for monitoring and implementing U.N. Sanctions on North Korea from 2010-11 and again in 2022-23.
In addition to frequent media commentary regarding peacebuilding and sanctions issues, to address more impactfully the negative effect of economic sanctions on innocent populations, in 2022 he co-founded and serves as co-principal for the Advancing Humanitarianism Through Sanctions Refinement project.
