Matthew Bolton: Humanitarian Aid Worker Turned Professor

		Matthew Bolton, PhD

Matthew Bolton, PhD, comes to Dyson College from the international humanitarian and development sector, where he has worked with several non-profits and UNICEF in over a dozen countries, including Bosnia, Iraq, Kenya and Uganda.

Dr. Bolton joined the New York faculty in the Political Science department in January and is teaching classes in international relations. He will also take over as Model United Nations advisor in the fall.

He brings first-hand experience to the classroom. Before joining Pace University, most recently he was the emergency coordinator and acting chief of mission for Outreach International’s educational program in Haiti, where he oversaw the response to the 2010 earthquake and the expansion of the program’s annual funding tenfold.

Dr. Bolton’s PhD thesis, from the London School of Economics and Political Science, explored the politics behind the allocation and implementation of foreign aid for the clearance of landmines by the U.S. and Norway for demining in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Sudan. His research, rooted in ethnographic fieldwork, focuses on global public and private provision of security and social services in conflicted countries. He has a Master’s in Development Studies, also from the LSE, and a BA(Hons) majoring in history and religion from Graceland University in Lamoni, IA.

Dr. Bolton has written two books: Foreign Aid and Landmine Clearance: Governance, Politics and Security in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Sudan (published by I.B. Tauris) and Apostle of the Poor: The Life and Work of Missionary and Humanitarian Charles D. Neff (published by John Whitmer Books). He writes a weekly column on international and social issues for The Examiner (Independence, MO) and has published in a variety of media outlets, including The Guardian, Jane’s Foreign Report, Global Journalist and Transitions Abroad. He recently published a research paper on governance of the international aid effort in Haiti, “Human Security After Collapse: Global Security in Post-Earthquake Haiti”.