James Ron, PhD, is an established, internationally oriented researcher with experience in academia, international consulting, war crimes investigations, and journalism. James now offers consulting services to organizations in the private, public, and non-profit sectors worldwide.
Academic Research & Teaching
As an academic, James is known for his work in sociology, international relations and political science. He has led international teams of survey researchers studying public opinion in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, and has researched the causes and patterns of political violence in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the former Yugoslavia. James has also directed teams of quantitative analysts studying international media coverage of world events, and the politics of international aid. James’ qualitative research includes in-depth interviews with politicians, soldiers, bureaucrats, aid workers, and victims of human rights abuse in over a dozen countries.
One of James’ recent scholarly works straddles the fields of international relations, political science, and sociology, and draws on original, population-based surveys in Colombia, India, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, and the United States. These polls asked representative samples of adults for their views towards domestic and international governments, social and political institutions, civil and human rights, and social activism.
A graduate of Stanford University and UC Berkeley, James Ron has held tenured academic positions in departments of sociology, political science, and public affairs. His most recent appointment was at the University of Minnesota, where he held an endowed chair in international affairs. Prior to that, James was a faculty member at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, and at McGill University in Montreal, where he held a Canada Research Chair. His first academic post was a tenure-track position with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Over the years, James’ scholarly research has been supported by a wide range of funding agencies. In Canada, these include the Canada Fund for Innovation, the Canada Research Chairs program, Global Affairs Canada, the International Development Research Centre, the government of Quebec, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. In the United States, James’ research funders include the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, Open Societies Foundations, and the United States Institute of Peace.
James has also held visiting research appointments and fellowships at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico City, and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
James Ron’s scholarly publications have appeared in a wide range of academic journals as well as with the California University Press and Oxford University Press.
To learn more about his publications, please visit his website and Google Scholar page, SemanticsScholar profile, ResearchGate account, Academia.edu portfolio, Web of Science profile, PhilPeople page, ORCID profile, or his LinkedIn profile.
Journalism
James worked for several years in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press, reporting on events in Israel, the Palestinian West Bank, and Gaza. Later, he began writing for newspapers and magazines, publishing guest pieces in the Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy, Globe and Mail (Canada), International Herald Tribune, Le Monde, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, Washington Post, and others.
International Research Consultant
Today, James works as a private, internationally oriented consultant. Some of his recent work includes membership in a team evaluating assistance by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Mexico’s forensic institutions, which have been overwhelmed by that country’s internal violence and a backlog of over 72,000 unidentified bodies. In other recent projects, James joined a team evaluating assistance by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation to NGOs in the Middle East, and evaluated research on women’s rights by a Bedouin human rights group.
Previously, James consulted for Global Affairs Canada, Canda’s foreign ministry, on policies towards transitional justice, human rights, and conflict analysis. In another past project, James worked with CARE-USA to evaluate their assistance to Rwandan refugees living in camps near Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. James has also worked as a paid and volunteer consultant for Human Rights Watch, investigating suspected war crimes and other violations of international law in Chechnya, Israel/Palestine, Kosovo, Nigeria, and Turkey.
In previous work for the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, James scrutinized their civilian protection efforts in the former Yugoslavia. He has also done evaluation work for Life for a Child, a non-profit affiliate of the International Diabetes Federation. James Ron has long volunteered his services to this Sydney-based charity, assisting their efforts to supply insulin and other medical supplies to paediatric patients with Type 1 diabetes. This work with patients, families, hospitals, and health ministries has taken James to India, Mexico, Morocco, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
In addition to his professional consulting work, James is now working on creative writing projects, some of which can be previewed on his personal blog.
James Ron 