John Bell

Visiting Professor

Biography

John Bell has worked for over two decades on Middle East politics, policy development and mediation. He was worked and lived in Cairo, Beirut, Gaza and Jerusalem and has had considerable experience on the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as political developments in the Arab world.
He is today Director of the Middle East and Mediterranean Program at the Toledo International Centre for Peace in Madrid, and was formerly Middle East Director in Jerusalem for Search for Common Ground, a global conflict resolution organization.

He is also a former United Nations and Canadian diplomat who served as a political officer at Canada’s embassy in Cairo, a member of Canada’s delegation to the Refugee Working Group in the peace process, Political Advisor to the Personal Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for southern Lebanon, advisor to the Canadian Government during the Iraq crisis in 2002-03 and Consultant to the International Crisis Group on recent developments in Jerusalem.

Mr. Bell is also a founding member of the “Jerusalem Old City Initiative” (University of Windsor), an effort to find creative options for this contentious issue. Mr. Bell also has extensive experience in communications as spokesperson for the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and Communications Coordinator for the Signing Conference for the International Treaty to Ban Landmines in Ottawa, 1997.

He has lectured on Middle East issues at universities in Canada, as well as the Canadian Foreign Service Institute and has written articles on these matters in newspapers and journals across the globe. Today, he also has a cultural blog on the region: http://albabblog.blogspot.com. Mr. Bell is fluent in English, Arabic and French.