Francesco Mancini is Vice Dean (Executive Education) and Associate Professor in Practice at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, as well as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). His work focuses on global governance, United Nations, conflict analysis and resolution. He regularly lectures at academic institutions and presents at conferences and to governments on international peace and security issues. He regularly appears on television news as commentator of current international affairs.
Francesco is also a Non-resident Senior Adviser at the International Peace Institute (IPI), where he was Senior Director of Research before relocating to Singapore in June 2014. Francesco is a member of the Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), a member of the Research Committee of the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) in Sydney, Australia, an Honorary Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute (MEI), an Associate Fellow at the Peace Informatics Lab of the Leiden University, Netherlands, and a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Peacebuilding.
Before joining the LKY School of Public Policy, Francesco was Senior Director of Research at the International Peace Institute (IPI) in New York, an independent, international think-tank devoted to the prevention and settlement of armed conflict. Francesco focused on conflict prevention, mediation, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. He also headed “Coping with Crisis, Conflict, and Change,” IPI’s largest program that worked to assist decision makers in the United Nations, other multilateral organizations, and their member states to strengthen their response capacity to global crises and armed conflict. During his tenure at IPI, Francesco has also conducted work in the Middle East on mediation, and in Sierra Leone and Liberia on peace operations. He has also worked on police reform in Jamaica and spent time in Cyprus working on the peace process for the reunification of the island.
Francesco has published extensively. His latest co-edited volume is The Management of UN Peacekeeping: Coordination, Learning, and Leadership in Peace Operations (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2017). He is also the co-editor of the volume Security & Development: Searching for Critical Connections (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010) and he conceived, designed, and edited the first and only Management Handbook for UN Field Missions in 2012. Francesco has published in peer-reviewed journals, including “Partnership – A New Horizon for Peacekeeping?,” a special issue of the journal International Peacekeeping (2011), “New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict,” in Stability Journal (2013), and “The Company We Keep: Private Contractors in Jamaica,” in Civil Wars (2006). Among his latest policy reports, Francesco has published Lost in Transition: UN Mediation in Libya, Syria and Yemen (IPI, 2016), Building Resilience in Cities Under Stress (IPI, 2016), Managing Change at the United Nations: Lessons from Recent Initiatives (IPI, 2015), Uncertain Borders: Territorial Disputes in Asia (ISPI, 2013), New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict (IPI, 2013). He wrote the concept and script of two videos: “The Asia-Pacific Century,” presented at the Jakarta International Defense Dialogue in 2013, an international conference hosted by the Government of Indonesia with an audience of 1,300, and “Local Change, Global Impact: The Middle East & the World,” produced by the firm which developed Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and narrated by actor Sir Patrick Stewart, which was first presented in Abu Dhabi at a retreat of Foreign Ministers from Europe and the Middle East in 2010.
Since 2004, Francesco has been teaching a graduate-level seminar on conflict assessment at Columbia University’s SIPA program. He also served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor for two years at New York University.
Prior to joining IPI, Francesco served as an Associate at the EastWest Institute in New York, where he co-managed the Worldwide Security Initiative, a program designed to enhance international cooperation in addressing new security threats, particularly transnational terrorism. Earlier in his career, he was a management consultant at Group CRCI in France, Italy, and Morocco, focusing on change management in large public utility companies. Francesco earned his Bachelor of Science in business administration from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, his hometown, and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he was awarded a fellowship within the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.