​Who We Are

Project Seshat's team currently includes about forty conflict management / negotiation specialists and ten security experts. The negotiation specialists include both practitioners and scholars with varied backgrounds in law, business, sociology, planning and many other fields. Most are well-known authors who have written at least one textbook in their field. The security specialists have backgrounds in police, intelligence, military, cybersecurity or related work at an equivalent level to the negotiation specialists. The project team operated from nine different countries as of early 2022.

​Steering Committee:

Calvin Chrustie

Calvin Chrustie, BA, BA (Honors), LLM is a senior security and critical risk consultant. He has successfully advised and coached executives, law offices, diplomats, politicians, community leaders, in these fields for several decades. He specializes in negotiations (ransom), intelligence, investigations, and crisis response and management. His work in this area is often described as ‘asymmetrical problem solving' and often touches on national security related issues, transnational crime actors and / or geopolitical dynamics.  Calvin served 33 years with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as a Senior Operations Officer. He specialized in complex transnational organized crime investigations, kidnap/extortion negotiations, illicit finance, crisis and conflict management. He has extensive experience in intelligence operations and international investigations with transnational organized crime networks, including those affiliated with state actors. He holds a Masters in Law (LLM), specializing in Alternate Dispute Resolution - Conflict and Negotiations. He also holds a BA in Justice and Law Enforcement and a BA (honours) with a Major in Law.  Calvin is a graduate of the FBI Academy’s and Scotland Yard's international hostage negotiation programs. He has extensive experience in the design and delivery of scenario-based and simulation training for crisis-related incidents. Calvin was the Team Leader of Canada's International Negotiation Group, a group of highly specialized negotiators tasked with terrorist and hostage situations. He now works with a boutique group of ‘tier-one' risk and security advisors with backgrounds in military, intelligence, policing, cyber, indigenous matters, NGO's and law.
More at Critical Risk Team

Veronique Fraser

Véronique Fraser is a Law Professor at the Faculty of Law of the Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), and she most recently held the position of Vice-Dean for Strategic Development for the Faculty. She is specialized in negotiation, cross-cultural dispute resolution, conflict avoidance and psychology of conflict. She holds a doctorate in law (Ph.D.) from the University of Ottawa, and is a lawyer called to the bars of the provinces of Québec (civil law) and Ontario (common law) in 2009, as well as an accredited mediator. She is the President of the Institute for Negotiation Innovation, a non-for-profit corporation which mission is to promote the development of innovative negotiation tools and mobilize knowledge derived from an international body of credible negotiation science, in order to make them freely accessible. She sits on the Executive Committee of the International Task Force on Mixed Mode Dispute Resolution, a combined effort of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, the International Mediation Institute and Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. She has been a visiting professor at the Faculty of the University of Toulouse (France) in 2018, at the Faculty of Law of the University Lyon 2 (France) in 2021, and a Scholar-in-Residence at Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine University School of Law (California) between 2016 and 2018, one of the leading dispute resolution programs in the United States. She has published over 20 articles and books in dispute resolution and negotiation and has given more than 30 lectures to academic and professional audiences.

​Chris Honeyman

Chris Honeyman (who also serves as Principal Investigator) is managing partner of Convenor Conflict Management, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC. He is co-editor of The Negotiator’s Desk Reference and six other books, and author of over 100 published articles, book chapters and monographs. He has led or co-directed a 30-year series of research-and-development programs, advised many academic and practice organizations, and served as a mediator, arbitrator and in other neutral capacities in more than 2,000 disputes.
More at Convenor Conflict Management and at NDR Books

Barney Jordaan

Barney Jordaan (Professor of Management Practice, Vlerick Business School, Ghent, Belgium) holds a doctorate in law from Stellenbosch University and is currently (since 2014) professor of management practice at Vlerick Business School, Belgium, focusing on negotiation, conflict management and the resolution of disputes impacting on organisations. Prior to this he held appointments as professor of law at Stellenbosch University and as professor in negotiation at two leading business schools in South Africa (universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch). Apart from his academic involvement, Barney has also been involved in private practice since 1985, first as associate in a human rights law firm in South Africa, thereafter as co-founder and director of a consulting practice with offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg which specializes in negotiation, mediation and dispute resolution and currently as negotiation trainer, coach and mediator. He is a senior mediator, having been involved in the field since 1989. He is certified by the International Mediation Institute as well as by the ADR Group (UK), the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR, UK) and the Africa Centre for dispute Settlement (ACDS). Until June 2014 he was also consultant to the World Bank Group’s Office of Mediation Services. He has been listed annually in the International Who’s Who of Commercial Mediators since 2011.

Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Andrea Kupfer Schneider is a Professor of Law and has taught Dispute Resolution, Negotiation, Ethics, and International Conflict Resolution for 25 years.  She is the inaugural director of the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Marquette University, and also serves as the Director of the nationally ranked Dispute Resolution Program at Marquette University Law School.  In July 2022, she will join Cardozo Law School in New York as the director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution.  Professor Schneider is the author or co-author of numerous books, including leading textbooks on dispute resolution generally, negotiation, mediation, and dispute resolution in the criminal context.  She has also edited multiple volumes focusing on interdisciplinary approaches to negotiation, including Negotiation Essentials for Lawyers and The Negotiator’s Desk Reference, both co-edited with Chris Honeyman. She has published articles on negotiation, ethics, pedagogy, gender and international conflict.  Professor Schneider was named 2009 Woman of the Year by the Wisconsin Law Journal and, in 2016, gave her first TEDx talk, entitled Women Don’t Negotiate and Other Similar Nonsense.  She was the 2017 recipient of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work.  She received her A.B. cum laude from Princeton University and her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School.