George A. Lopez is Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. He previously served as a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute. He is a leading expert on economic sanctions, peacebuilding, and various peace-related issues. Lopez has advised the United Nations, various international agencies, and governments on economic sanctions issues, ranging from assessing their humanitarian impact to the design of targeted financial sanctions. He has written more than 40 articles and book chapters and authored or edited six books (often with Kroc Institute faculty member David Cortright) on sanctions. Their research detailing the unlikely presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was published before the 2003 Iraq War as “Disarming Iraq” in Arms Control Today and afterwards as “Containing Iraq: the Sanctions Worked” in Foreign Affairs.
Lopez served as interim executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1997 and chaired its Board of Directors (1998-2003). As a Senior Research Associate at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York City, he assisted with the Council’s post-9/11 public programming. He held a Senior Jennings Randolph Fellowship at USIP from 2009-10 and served as a member of the UN Panel of Experts for monitoring and implementing UN Sanctions on North Korea from 2010-11. From 2013-15, he was the Vice President of the Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding at USIP. In 2018, he was named a Fulbright Senior Specialist.