KU News Release

KU alumnus to discuss his work with Doctors Without Borders

LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas alumnus who is a field coordinator for the charitable organization Doctors Without Borders will give the 2007-08 Peace and Conflict Studies Lecture.

Michael Barringer-Mills will speak on “Médecins Sans Frontières and Shrinking Humanitarian Space” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 25, at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union. His lecture will include a presentation of the worldwide activity of Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières, and discuss how humanitarian work by nongovernmental organizations is being increasingly co-opted by military needs.

Doctors Without Borders was founded in 1971 and is an independent, international organization that delivers emergency aid to people in more than 70 countries affected by armed conflict, natural or man-made disasters or exclusion from health care. Often one of the first humanitarian organizations to arrive at the scene of an emergency and well-known for its relief efforts during periods of crisis in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda, the group was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

A native of McPherson, Barringer-Mills earned a bachelor’s in history from KU in 1997, graduating with honors and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa national honor society. Barringer-Mills joined Doctors Without Borders in 2004. He served as a logistician, administrator and supply officer in Sudan from 2004 to 2005. During 2006 and 2007, he was a project coordinator for the organization in Uganda and Nigeria. His work included leading an exploratory mission to the refugee crisis on the Uganda/Congo border; directing the group’s response to a meningitis outbreak in Jigawa State, Uganda, which involved the design and implementation of a vaccination campaign for 180,000 people; and managing a 72-bed trauma center in a context of increasing urban violence in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Barringer-Mills is currently between assignments with the organization, pursuing a master’s degree at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

The Peace and Conflict Studies Lecture Series is sponsored by the Humanities and Western Civilization Program at KU. Co-sponsors of this year’s lecture are the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Kansas African Studies Center; Center for European Studies; and the departments of African and African-American studies, geography and political science.

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