Ramesh Thakur

Dr. Thakur is the inaugural Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Previously, he was Vice Rector and Senior Vice Rector of the United Nations University (and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations) from 1998-2007.

Educated in India and Canada, he was a Professor of International Relations at the University of Otago in New Zealand and professor and head of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University, during which time he was also a consultant and adviser to the Australian and New Zealand governments on arms control, disarmament, and international security issues.

He was a Commissioner and one of the principal authors of The Responsibility to Protect (2001), and Senior Adviser on Reforms and Principal Writer of the United Nations Secretary-General's second reform report (2002). The author and editor of over thirty books and 300 articles and book chapters, he also writes regularly for quality national and international newspapers around the world. His most recent books include The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge University Press, 2006) – winner of the ACUNS 2008 award for the best recent book on the United Nations – and War in Our Time: Reflections on Iraq, Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction (United Nations University Press, 2007).