Richard Gowan is a senior fellow at the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research and the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs in Columbia University and is the overall editor of the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations. He has written on the European Union’s role in state-building, cooperation between the EU and the United Nations and multilateral human rights diplomacy. At the New York University Center on International Cooperation, he works closely with the UN departments of peacekeeping operations and political affairs. He has broadcast widely and written for numerous newspapers, websites and academic journals and writes a weekly column (“Diplomatic Fallout”) for World Politics Review. He is currently working on a book about the international response to the Syrian conflict and its lessons for future crisis management initiatives.