Global Negotiation Conference 2019
ETH Zurich
17-19 July 2019
The sixth Global Negotiation Conference will place at the ETH Zurich from the 17-19 July 2019. The topic of the final simulation will be negotiating an international treaty on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS). We are pleased to announce the following speakers will conduct workshops and presentations as part of the program.
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Mircea Geoana
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Mircea Geoana is Deputy Secretary General of NATO. He is the Founder and President of the Aspen Institute Romania. During his distinguished political and diplomatic career he previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania (2000-2004), President of the Romanian Senate (2008-2011), Chairman of the Romanian Social-Democrat Party (PSD) (2005-2010), Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Romanian Senate (2008-2012) and member in the European Integration Joint Committee of the Romanian Parliament. He also served as Ambassador to the United States. He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute, the University of Bucharest and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in Paris, France.
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Dennis Ross (via video-link)
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Ambassador Dennis Ross is counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Prior to returning to the Institute in 2011, he served two years as special assistant to President Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region, and a year as special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
For more than twelve years, Ambassador Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process and dealing directly with the parties in negotiations. A highly skilled diplomat, Ambassador Ross was U.S. point man on the peace process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. He was instrumental in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to reach the 1995 Interim Agreement; he also successfully brokered the 1997 Hebron Accord, facilitated the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, and intensively worked to bring Israel and Syria together.
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A scholar and diplomat with more than two decades of experience in Soviet and Middle East policy, Ambassador Ross worked closely with Secretaries of State James Baker, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright. Prior to his service as special Middle East coordinator under President Clinton, Ambassador Ross served as director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in the first Bush administration. In that capacity, he played a prominent role in U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control negotiations, and the 1991 Gulf War coalition.
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Michael Ambühl
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Michael Ambühl is a Professor of Negotiation and Conflict Management at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics of ETH, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and the Director of the Swiss School of Public Governance. Previously, Michael Ambühl spent over 30 years as a Swiss Diplomat where he served as State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and State Secretary in the Finance Ministry. Throughout his career, he was a member of the “Swiss-EU Bilateral I”- negotiation team, he led the negotiations of the “Swiss-EU Bilateral II”- agreements (including Schengen), he was facilitator of the Geneva Iran-P5+1 talks, and in the Armenia-Turkey Protocols, signed in Zurich in 2009. He negotiated the Swiss-US UBS-deal, the Tax treaty Switzerland-UK&Austria, the Swiss-US FATCA Agreement and the Swiss-US Tax deal.
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Mikkel Gudsøe
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​Mikkel Gudsøe is an honorary associate professor of negotiation at Aarhus University – Business and Social Sciences where he also serves as Program Manager for the collaboration with Program on Negotiation Global at Harvard Law School. Mikkel has regularly taught nationally and internationally to students, government officials, lawyers, accountants and business professionals. He has also been an active coach of Danish teams in international negotiation and mediation competitions. Previously, Mikkel worked as Chief Attorney in the Danish Fashion & Textile Trade Organization with responsibility for international trade relations as well as negotiation and conflict resolution and most recently as Executive Vice President - Legal Affairs in the Juhl Bach Group.
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Regina Sibylle Surber
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Regina Surber is a scientific advisor on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) at ICT4Peace. She is also a co-founder and scientific advisor at the Zurich Hub for Ethics and Technology (ZHET), a space for knowledge-generating discussions on the dual-use aspect of AI-enabled technology. Previously, Regina worked for Human Rights Watch in Switzerland, as well as NGOs in Madagascar and Cameroon. During her studies at the University of Zurich and the University of Geneva, she held several teaching assistantships in political philosophy and international relations.
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Tobias Langenegger
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Tobias Langenegger is lecturer and researcher at ETH Zurich. He holds a BSc and MSc degree in Environmental Sciences from ETH Zurich and completed his PhD on the modelling of conflicts and negotiations at ETH Zurich. Beside research and teaching, Tobias is involved in negotiation consulting and the development of the Negotiation Engineering concept. Before joining the Chair of Negotiation and Conflict Management he was working at the Professorship of Environmental Policy and Economics at ETH Zurich and at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Geneva.
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Simone Schönenberger
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Simone Schönenberger is currently the Deputy Head of the Treaty Section of the Directorate of International Law in the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, which she joined in 2016. Before holding this position, she served as an Academic Associate to the Legal Advisor of the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington D.C., treating legal aspects of political and economic matters. Prior to her work in the field of international law, she worked in a private law firm. Simone Schönenberger holds a Master of Law with a specialization in European Law from the University of Fribourg.
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Eemeli Isoaho
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Eemeli Isoaho serves as Program Coordinator for the Master of Advanced Studies ETH Mediation in Peace Processes (MAS ETH MPP) program at ETH Zurich. In that role, Eemeli is responsible for the development and management of the program, including its curriculum, administration, and strategic partnerships. Eemeli previously worked as Programme Management Officer at CMI, a peace mediation organization founded by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate President Martti Ahtisaari. At CMI, Eemeli specialized in the provision of mediation support to African regional and sub-regional organizations as well as the establishment of track 1-1.5 mediation and dialogue initiatives in several countries in East, West, and Central Africa.
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