Dennis Dijkzeul is the Executive Director of the Institute of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict and Professor of Conflict and Organization Research at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He was the founding Director of the humanitarian Affairs Program at the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University in New York, where he still occasionally teaches as an adjunct professor. He has conducted research projects with international and local organizations in the eastern DRC, as well as in Kinshasa, for almost a decade. He has further worked as a consultant for UN organizations and NGOs in Africa, Europe, Central Asia, and Latin America.