Professor
Ph.D., Duke University

mail: bschaff @ emory.edu
Telephone: (404) 727-6361

Areas of Interest
Labor Economics and Microeconomics

Biography
Dr. Schaffer’s areas of interest include: labor-management relations, microeconomics and conflict resolution. For nearly 20 years she served as a labor arbitrator, listed on the panels of the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service, the American Arbitration Association and the National Mediation Board. She served, by appointment of then President Jimmy Carter, as a member of the Federal Service Impasses Panel. The Panel has broad authority to resolve negotiation impasses between Federal sector agencies and the unions that represented their civilian personnel. She also conducted many training sessions on labor arbitration and gave frequent speeches on that subject and on the operation of the Panel.

In the mid 1980s, she switched from arbitration to mediation and, since then, has specialized in divorce and child custody mediation. She trains in several mediation programs and develops teaching materials for such programs.

She is a registered mediator with the Georgia Office of Dispute Resolution as well as a Practitioner Member of the Association for Conflict Resolution, the successor organization to the Academy of Family Mediators. At Emory, she serves as the Director of the Violence Studies Program. This program offers a minor to undergraduates who wish to study violence, conflict and conflict resolution from an interdisciplinary perspective as well as other training and education programs.