Since joining the organization in 2014, Amber French has led in developing and managing ICNC’s editorial and media initiatives. Her current roles are Managing Editor of ICNC’s Minds of the Movement blog (est. June 2017); and Project Co-Lead of REACT (Research-in-Action), the ICNC partnership with ActionAid Denmark focused on the power of activist writing. For the blog, she has commissioned 320+ articles by 150+ activist writers, academics and members of civil society from around the world. In 2016, she oversaw the launch of the Nonviolent Conflict News website, a news aggregator site on nonviolent movements (now succeeded by Minds of the Movement). She also launched and managed ICNC Press from 2015 to 2017.
Currently based in Paris, France, she continues to develop thought leadership on civil resistance in French. She is leading the development of an ICNC online course on civil resistance entirely in French and based on Francophone materials; is Adjunct Professor at the European School of Political and Social Sciences (ESPOL) in Lille, where she proposed a new course on civil resistance; and serves on the editorial board of the French review, Alternatives non-violentes. Amber is a French to English translator and frequent contributor to the French journals Alternatives non-violentes, Recherches Internationales and Les Cahiers de l’IDRP. She serves as co-lead of the Institut pour la Paix’s working group on civil resistance, nonviolence and the culture of peace.
Previously as ICNC’s Coordinator of Editorial Activities, Amber edited and coordinated design work in support of publishing nine ICNC monographs and special reports (online and in print edition). In 2015, she also served as Co-Editor of openDemocracy’s civilResistance page, commissioning, editing and promoting articles on a wide range of topics related to civil resistance. From 2014 to 2016, Amber worked in diverse roles for the ICNC Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict, including logistics, community engagement, session facilitation, as well as co-leading a presentation on Diaspora and Civil Resistance.
Amber came to ICNC with years of professional research, writing, program management and editing experience, including with the International Organization for Migration, ICF International, as editor of the Migration Policy Institute’s Migration Information Source, and as co-editor of the New Diversities journal co-published by UNESCO and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. She has also served as assistant program specialist in UNESCO’s Social and Human Sciences Sector (International Migration and Urbanization Section), and coordinator of the UNESCO chairmanship of the Global Migration Group, an interagency group working to harmonize international migration policies.
She holds an MA degree in international relations and diplomacy from the American Graduate School of Paris, France. Her graduate thesis focused on the human rights outcomes of female migration in the post-colonial context. She also holds a BA in international relations and French (double degree) from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.