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80 Peace and Conflict Studies Research Topics

FacebookXEmailWhatsAppRedditPinterestLinkedInFor students embarking on their journey to find the perfect research topics in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies for their undergraduate, master’s, or doctoral theses, the road ahead can be both exciting and daunting. Peace and Conflict Studies is a multidisciplinary field that delves deep into the complexities of human conflict, resolution, and […]

For students embarking on their journey to find the perfect research topics in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies for their undergraduate, master’s, or doctoral theses, the road ahead can be both exciting and daunting. Peace and Conflict Studies is a multidisciplinary field that delves deep into the complexities of human conflict, resolution, and the pursuit of lasting peace. In this blog post, we aim to guide you through this challenging but rewarding process, providing diverse research topics that span the spectrum of peace and conflict studies. Whether you’re interested in international relations, social justice, conflict resolution strategies, or the psychology of conflict, you’ll find a wealth of intriguing research ideas to inspire your academic journey.

Peace and Conflict Studies, often referred to as Conflict Resolution Studies or Peace Studies, is an interdisciplinary field that examines the causes of conflicts, the dynamics of violence, and the strategies for achieving and maintaining peace in various contexts, from local disputes to international crises.

A List Of Potential Research Topics In Peace and Conflict Studies:

Assessing the role of technology and social media in shaping the narrative of conflicts and peace efforts.
Evaluating the role of human rights advocacy in conflict prevention.
Analyzing the role of trauma healing and mental health support in post-conflict recovery.
Analyzing the impact of economic disparities exacerbated by the pandemic on conflict-prone regions.
Investigating the impact of land rights disputes on rural conflicts and peace.
Assessing the impact of arms trade and arms control measures on conflict dynamics.
Analyzing the role of religion in promoting interfaith dialogue and peace.
Evaluating the role of refugees and displaced persons in peacebuilding efforts.
Evaluating the effectiveness of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs in post-conflict settings.
Exploring the challenges and opportunities of remote peacebuilding initiatives in a post-COVID world.
Evaluating the role of international organizations in mediating conflicts exacerbated by the pandemic.
Investigating the role of cultural heritage preservation in post-conflict reconciliation.
Investigating the impact of climate change on conflict and peace dynamics.
Assessing the impact of foreign aid on conflict resolution and peacebuilding in recipient countries.
Evaluating the role of transitional justice in addressing the legacy of past atrocities.
Investigating the role of social and environmental sustainability in peacebuilding efforts.
Analyzing the role of digital diplomacy and online platforms in conflict resolution during and post-COVID-19.
Analyzing the ethical challenges and dilemmas faced by peacekeepers and mediators in contemporary conflicts.
Examining the influence of war crimes tribunals on justice and reconciliation.
Exploring the portrayal of conflict resolution in contemporary cinema: A synergy between Peace and Conflict Studies and Film Studies.
Examining the UK’s role in international peacekeeping and conflict mediation efforts post-Brexit.
Assessing the impact of border walls and barriers on regional peace and stability.
Assessing the influence of Brexit on the United Kingdom’s foreign policy in conflict resolution.
Analyzing the role of social justice movements in addressing systemic inequalities that can lead to conflict.
Exploring the role of transitional justice mechanisms in post-conflict reconciliation and stability.
Assessing the effectiveness of Track II diplomacy in complementing formal peace negotiations.
Evaluating the influence of economic globalization on conflict and peace.
Examining the role of transitional justice mechanisms in addressing human rights violations in conflict-affected societies.
Assessing the impact of Brexit on the Northern Ireland peace process and cross-border relations.
Examining the relationship between ethnic identity and conflict dynamics in multi-ethnic societies.
Assessing the effectiveness of post-conflict reconciliation programs in divided societies.
Examining the influence of identity politics on conflict escalation and resolution.
Exploring the challenges and opportunities of regional organizations in conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
Assessing the effectiveness of community-based peacebuilding initiatives.
Analyzing the role of the UK government in addressing climate-induced conflicts in vulnerable regions.
Evaluating the role of women in peace processes and conflict resolution.
Examining the effects of COVID-19 on gender dynamics and women’s participation in peace processes.
Investigating the influence of religion and religious actors in conflict and peace processes.
Investigating the role of education in promoting tolerance and peace among youth in conflict-prone areas.
Examining the role of civil society organizations in peacebuilding and conflict prevention.
Evaluating the role of sports and athletics in promoting cross-cultural understanding and peace.
Assessing the role of non-state actors in conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
Evaluating the role of social media in shaping public opinion during conflicts.
Examining the role of transitional governments in post-conflict reconstruction.
Investigating the impact of immigration policies on social cohesion and conflict within the UK.
Analyzing the role of international organizations like the United Nations in conflict mediation.
Assessing the effectiveness of UK-based non-governmental organizations in peacebuilding efforts abroad.
Investigating the influence of cultural diplomacy in promoting peace and reconciliation in the UK.
Analyzing the use of technology and artificial intelligence in conflict analysis and resolution.
Examining the relationship between state sovereignty and international intervention in conflicts.
Examining the influence of colonial legacies on contemporary conflicts in post-colonial states.
Analyzing the impact of foreign intervention in internal conflicts.
Analyzing the role of the UK’s arms trade in fueling conflicts in conflict-prone regions.
Examining the influence of gender equality on peacebuilding efforts in conflict-affected regions.
Examining the relationship between resource scarcity and conflict in developing countries.
Assessing the role of cultural diplomacy in promoting international understanding and peace.
Investigating the role of international trade agreements in conflict prevention.
Investigating the role of art and culture in promoting peace and reconciliation.
Examining the socioeconomic impact of peace initiatives on labor markets: An interdisciplinary approach to Peace and Conflict Studies and Labor Economics .
Investigating the role of economic sanctions in achieving diplomatic conflict resolution.
Investigating the role of social justice movements in addressing systemic inequalities that can lead to conflict.
Assessing the impact of media and propaganda in shaping perceptions of conflicts.
Examining the role of education in countering extremist ideologies and preventing conflict.
Investigating the impact of border disputes on regional stability and peace.
Investigating the role of civil society organizations in peace negotiations and conflict prevention.
Analyzing the role of environmental degradation in conflict-prone regions.
Analyzing the influence of international humanitarian law on the conduct of armed conflicts.
Examining the influence of historical memory and commemoration in post-conflict societies.
Assessing the impact of international peacekeeping missions on conflict resolution in post-conflict regions.
Investigating the intersection of public health measures and conflict escalation during the pandemic.
Evaluating the effectiveness of peace education programs in schools.
Assessing the role of misinformation and disinformation in exacerbating conflicts during the COVID-19 crisis.
Assessing the impact of conflict on gender-based violence and women’s rights.
Analyzing the use of restorative justice approaches in resolving intergroup conflicts.
Examining the implications of Northern Ireland’s peace process for other global conflict zones.
Analyzing the role of soft power in international relations and conflict resolution.
Exploring the historical evolution of conflict resolution practices in the United Kingdom.
Analyzing the effectiveness of truth and reconciliation commissions in post-conflict societies.
A comprehensive review of the major theories and approaches in Peace and Conflict Studies.
Assessing the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance movements in achieving social and political change.

In the realm of Peace and Conflict Studies, the possibilities for research are as vast as the challenges facing our world today. Whether you’re an undergraduate eager to explore the intricacies of conflict resolution, a master’s student aiming to contribute to peacebuilding strategies, or a doctoral candidate seeking to deepen the field’s theoretical foundations, you now have a selection of research topics to spark your imagination and fuel your academic pursuits. As you embark on this journey, remember that every dissertation topic has the potential to shed light on critical issues and contribute to the pursuit of a more peaceful world. So, go forth with curiosity, determination, and a passion for making a positive impact through your research.

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Peace Research Areas

What is peace education and peace research.

Peace education and research occurs in—and at the intersections of—traditional and emerging disciplines. Peacemaking is less a distinct field and more a conceptual framework with broad application.

The table below—adapted from "Social, Political, and Cultural Influences on Peace Studies" by George A. Lopez—shows an early conceptual map of some peace studies disciplines.

The Peacemaking and Peacebuilding Research Areas graphic — adapted from "Peacebuilding 2.0: Mapping the Boundaries of an Expanding Field" by the Alliance for Peacebuilding — identifies additional established and emerging areas of peace research. Areas depicted include Academic, Conflict Prevention, Conflict Resolution & Transformation, Democracy & Governance, Development, Environment, Food Security, Genocide Prevention, Health, Human Rights, Human Security, Humanitarian Aid, Nuclear Proliferation, Refugees & Internally Displaced Persons, Religion, Rule of Law, Science & Technology, Security, Women, and Youth.

Center for Peacemaking priority research areas

The center has identified the following research areas as priorities for advancing peacemaking scholarship at Marquette:

The process of healing and reconciliation after the use of violence (random, terror, sexual, premeditated, military).
The reasons for the success or failure of peace agreements and accords in building nonviolent peaceful communities.
Reasons for the success or failure of nonviolent social movements.
Best practices for teaching about peace and conflict resolution.
The role of religion and ethnic sources as a motivator for the expansion or the incitement to violence.
The role of economic, governmental and international organizations (UN, EU, WHO, etc.) policy in promoting peace.
The use (positive or negative) of communication, technology and social media to influence perceptions of peacemaking, of the identities of the "other" or of violence.
The effect of language and advertising in cultural values and ethics toward gender or ethnic perceptions.
The efficacy of peacemaking and conflict resolution in schools, the workplace, the government or international conflicts.
Role of literature and entertainment influencing society's attitudes toward social welfare, justice and violence.
Research related to the reduction of violence against women, including evaluations of efforts by health care and social service providers to reduce familial and societal violence in at-risk populations.
The effects of environmental degradation on regional conflict and migration and methods of promoting sustainable use of resources.
The impact of handgun availability on interpersonal conflict and community health in Milwaukee.
The impact of violence prevention and community organizing on community efficacy and neighborhood development in Milwaukee.

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Peace and conflict studies

Peace and conflict studies focuses on the causes of war and conflicts as well as conditions for peace. Why do war and conflict arise? How is peace created and preserved? What threatens the safety and stability of people and societies? Particularly important topics in Peace and Conflict Studies include peace negotiations, conflict resolution, peace-building work, human rights, poverty reduction and sustainable development.

Beyond winners and losers: Regional variations of peace in Sri Lanka’s war victory (REGIOPEACE)

Visit Umeå together with the CBRNE centre invite the public to Emergency Preparedness Day in central Umeå.

A Day at work for Matheus Souza, doctoral student in Peace and conflict studies

Patrik Johansson lecturing on the situation in the Middle East

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Jennek, Rafal. "Sam Harris on Religion in Peace and Conflict." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-324558.

Elachi, Agada John. "Exploring Peace Education for Consensual Peace Building in Nigeria." ScholarWorks, 2018. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/4966.

Jalkebro, Rikard. "Finding a juncture between peace and conflict studies and terrorism studies : the case of the Mindanao conflict." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11865.

Alhajj, Imad. "Challenges for Building Peace in Syria post-2011 Conflict : Evaluation as Research and Monitoring in Conflict Zones." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-455516.

Phayal, Anup. "MASS FEARS, STRONG LEADERS AND THE RISK OF RENEWED CONFLICT: THREE ESSAYS ON POST-CONFLICT ELECTIONS." UKnowledge, 2016. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/polysci_etds/19.

Mongrut, Rosado Kiara. "Resisting Liberal Peace: Unpacking the FARC-EP’s Documents for La Habana Peace Negotiations." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/38679.

Kezer, Robert Allen. "Integral nonviolent conflict| Reframing the idea of civil resistance against violent oppression." Thesis, California Institute of Integral Studies, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3621950.

Nonviolent strategies have been shown to be more effective than violent insurgencies for countering oppression while increasing the subsequent degree of democracy in the country and reducing its chances of civil war. But we still do not know why some campaigns work and others do not. This dissertation develops a methodology for reframing our understanding of nonviolent conflict according to the all quadrants all levels (AQAL) model of integral theory that can also be used to investigate other topics as well.

The literature review covers terms, definitions, and misconceptions about nonviolent conflict, a historical lineage, and an overview of current theories and personalities. The terms simple and complex AQAL are introduced, and the AQAL model is contextualized with current knowledge as relevant to the five elements of integral theory: quadrants, types, states, and lines and levels of development. The model is then overlaid with each of the five primary debates in the field to show how integral theory reduces the polarization that often defines academic disputes and better informs our understanding of nonviolent conflict by allowing inclusion of all valid lines of truth. Integral methodological pluralism (IMP) is then used to bring forth the disciplinary subquestions in each methodological zone that, if answered, would begin to fill in the disciplinary gaps in our knowledge and better complete the process of contextualizing the AQAL model. I then offer suggestions for six integral research projects that use IMP to take a transdisciplinary approach to researching the more complex dynamics that happen between all of the factors identified previously and in context of the evolving situation. This process advances our understanding of how to use integral theory to reframe our approach to a field of inquiry, reduces the confusion surrounding nonviolent conflict by basing the investigation on perspectives not perceptions, and produces a model that is inclusive of all valid lines of truth and weighs their importance based on the context of the situation.

Mokoena, Benjamin P. O. "Conflict and peace in Burundi : exploring the cause(s) and nature of the conflict and prospects for peace." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/2394.

Amadio, Ruth. "An Investigation of Structural Conflict: Women in Leadership Across Denominations." Kent State University Honors College / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ksuhonors162060399416394.

von, Schmettow Jan. "Cooking Peace? : Authoritative mediators' formulation in the Aceh conflict 2004-2005 and the Kosovo conflict 2005-2007." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för freds- och konfliktforskning, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-446153.

Suhrke, A., and J. Buckmaster. "Aid, growth and peace: A comparative analysis." University of Bradford, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/4184.

Clemens, Julie Lynn. "Making Peace in Peace Studies: A Foucauldian Revisioning of a Contested Field." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1228179006.

Meschoulam, Mauricio. "Values, Perceptions, Conceptions, and Peacebuilding: A Case Study in a Mexico City Neighborhood." ScholarWorks, 2011. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1083.

Elizarni, FNU. "Gender, Conflict, Peace: The Roles of Feminist Popular Education During and After the Conflict in Aceh, Indonesia." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1605018870170842.

Hayden, Nancy K. "Balancing belligerents or feeding the beast| Transforming conflict traps." Thesis, University of Maryland, College Park, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10130005.

Since the end of the Cold War, recurring civil conflicts have been the dominant form of violent armed conflict in the world, accounting for 70% of conflicts active between 2000-2013. Duration and intensity of episodes within recurring conflicts in Africa exhibit four behaviors characteristic of archetypal dynamic system structures. The overarching questions asked in this study are whether these patterns are robustly correlated with fundamental concepts of resiliency in dynamic systems that scale from micro-to macro levels; are they consistent with theoretical risk factors and causal mechanisms; and what are the policy implications.

Econometric analysis and dynamic systems modeling of 36 conflicts in Africa between 1989 -2014 are combined with process tracing in a case study of Somalia to evaluate correlations between state characteristics, peace operations and foreign aid on the likelihood of observed conflict patterns, test hypothesized causal mechanisms across scales, and develop policy recommendations for increasing human security while decreasing resiliency of belligerents. Findings are that observed conflict patterns scale from micro to macro levels; are strongly correlated with state characteristics that proxy a mix of cooperative (e.g., gender equality) and coercive (e.g., security forces) conflict-balancing mechanisms; and are weakly correlated with UN and regional peace operations and humanitarian aid. Interactions between peace operations and aid interventions that effect conflict persistence at micro levels are not seen in macro level analysis, due to interdependent, micro-level feedback mechanisms, sequencing, and lagged effects.

This study finds that the dynamic system structures associated with observed conflict patterns contain tipping points between balancing mechanisms at the interface of micro-macro level interactions that are determined as much by factors related to how intervention policies are designed and implemented, as what they are. Policy implications are that reducing risk of conflict persistence requires that peace operations and aid interventions (1) simultaneously increase transparency, promote inclusivity (with emphasis on gender equality), and empower local civilian involvement in accountability measures at the local levels; (2) build bridges to horizontally and vertically integrate across levels; and (3) pave pathways towards conflict transformation mechanisms and justice that scale from the individual, to community, regional, and national levels.

Rinaldi, Jacquelyn Ane. "Conflict resolution without war through the learned skill of compassion." Thesis, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10164664.

Compassion is often misunderstood. To live with compassion does not mean to give up one’s own well-being or to jeopardize the well-being of her family in order to serve the needs of others. Compassion means one must first take care of herself before she is able to tend to another. True compassion can exist only within the framework of well-balanced psychology or even-mindedness. It takes healthy self-esteem to realize one’s own limits and set clear and direct boundaries to protect those limits. Compassion means being deeply human and at the same time honoring one’s self and others.

Compassion, like muscle memory and rote memorization, is cultivated through practice. The current research from the field of neuroscience interprets compassion as a learned behavior as well as delineating that meditation is one of the most powerful tools for cultivating compassion and other balanced neurological states of being.

If we cultivated meditation, as we do reading and writing, as a part of the educational process for children from toddlers, through higher education, would that, in time change, what seems to be our addiction to the Ares archetype—war? At the very least, some students will see more compassionately, relate to life with more empathy, meet challenges with more optimism, and live with a greater sense of well-being and resilience. At best most of our children will grow up with these life affirming qualities that have power beyond measure to heighten the collective to live in a more peaceful state of consciousness.

This dissertation discusses the relationship between compassion and peace. As humanity becomes more compassionate, peace becomes a more viable state.

Rosenbohm, Dominique. "Art & Peace, Peace Education and Performing Artist’s Reflections." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23323.

Majid, Asif. "The symbiotic embeddedness of theatre and conflict| A metaphor-inspired quartet of case studies." Thesis, Georgetown University, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1586921.

This study seeks to demonstrate connections between theatre and conflict, as inspired by metaphor and embodied by case studies of four theatrical organizations working in conflict zones: The Freedom Theatre in Palestine, Ajoka Theatre in Pakistan, DAH Teater in Serbia, and Belarus Free Theatre in Belarus. In so doing, it attempts to name the overlaps and relationships as sub-concepts that exist as connective tissue between conflict and theatre, writ large. These sub-concepts - subverting to play, imagining hidden histories, embodying the unspeakable, and blurring illusion and reality - offer a taxonomy of various dimensions of the theatre-conflict relationship. This taxonomy explores the symbiotic embeddedness of theatre and conflict as a possible explanation for the existence of theatrical organizations in conflict zones.

von, Billerbeck Sarah Birgitta Kanafani. "Whose peace? : local ownership and UN peacebuilding." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b6c84aa3-5344-48d8-ba1a-2b01d1a75146.

Ahamed, Zaherali K. "The Spirit and Insights of the Axial Flowerings| A Paradigm for Conflict Resolution?" Thesis, George Mason University, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3606384.

The purpose of this study is to consider the relevance and applicability of the spirit and insights of the Axial Flowerings to the modern practice of conflict resolution.

Jaspers, a German philosopher, articulated the term Axial Age in his book that was translated into English in 1953. Jaspers identified, in the context of history, the Axial Age as a pivotal change in human condition that was marked by the emergence of reflexivity, historicity and agentiality of the individual in four distinct and distant areas - China, India, eastern Mediterranean, and Greece.

Jaspers' focus on the Axial Age was Eurocentric, and rooted in the ethos of Christianity. In recent years, Jaspers' term has been expanded and elaborated to include Axial civilizations more broadly, and Axial Age civilizations to bring into consideration the undocumented civilizations, as also other contemporary ancient civilizations that did not feature in Jaspers' thesis.

Ideas have been the well spring of intellectual development of mankind. Ideas agitated by seminal thinkers have been agents of change, for better or for worse, throughout history. There is, thus, a direct nexus between the history of ideas, and the Axial Flowerings. Modern scholars have debated religion, ethics, culture, power distribution, social justice, as also individuals and their relationship to associational living, that were the core concerns of society of the Axial epochs. Religion, and its contradictory proclivities of violence and non-violence; ethics and its binding force; culture and its varied manifestations; individuals and communities and their varying values; power and its asymmetries; are as germane to the present day discourse of conflict resolution, as they were in those far away times. Moreover, recently, additional subjects such as other civilizations, cultures, education, and the global ramifications of each, have entered the discourse of Axial Age, Axial Flowerings and other Axial breakthroughs.

The current convention of the conflict resolution discipline is that it is a 20 th century dispensation. My study argues that looking through the lenses of the history of ideas and the Axial Flowerings, points to ancient and noble ancestry for conflict resolution. It is, after all, a trite saying that from time immemorial conflict has been ever present in associational living, and that all conflicts are ultimately settled by each society through culturally legitimated processes.

I, therefore, argue detailed study of the Axial Flowerings together with the history of ideas is a fit and proper paradigm for conflict resolution, and presents a great opportunity to learn and profit from multi-disciplinary, and multi-dimensional insights of the Axial Age and the Axial breakthroughs, and to relate these to the present conditions.

Pico, Laura. "Colombia, the Resilient Survivor: DDR, Elusive Peace, and the Politics of Post-Conflict." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2016. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/163.

Lindgren, Göran. "Studies in conflict economics and economic growth." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala University, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-6942.

“Armaments and Economic Performance”. The literature on military expenditure (milex) is scrutinized with respect to five areas. Investment is reduced when milex increases. Most studies have found economic growth hindered by higher milex. No clear association between milex and employment is found. However, the same amount of other public expenditure creates more jobs. There is some evidence for milex as counter-cyclical instrument in the US. The result for studies if milex is used in electoral cycles in the US is contradictory. Disaggregated data are emphasized as a possible solution to get more definite results.

“The Economic Costs of Civil Wars”. The empirical studies of the economic costs of internal armed conflicts are divided into accounting and modelling methods. Cost is seen as the difference between the counterfactual production without conflict and the actual production. The average economic cost of internal armed conflict is a 3.7% yearly reduction of GDP. There are large differences between the estimates. One of the reasons for pursuing such studies is to give improved basis for more cost-effective post-conflict reconstruction, which is better achieved with an accounting method.

“War and Economic Performance – Different Data, Different Conclusions?” This article studies the importance of armed conflict for economic growth by replicating an earlier analysis with new data on conflicts. The basic model investigates how conflicts in 1960-1974 affect economic growth in 1975-1989. Koubi finds that “wars are conducive to higher growth”. Koubi’s finding is confirmed when different conflict data is used in a similar research design.

“The Role of External Factors in Economic Growth: A Comparative Analysis of Thailand and the Philippines 1950-1990”. Can differences in economic performance be explained by external factors? Both historical and regression analyses are utilised to answer the question. Three external factors are analysed: International trade, foreign direct investment , and external debt . In the regression analysis none of the external factors qualify as statistically significant. The historical analysis finds two external factors discriminating between the two countries. Thus, they might explain the differing growth rates of Thailand and the Philippines: Manufactured exports and external debt.

Grayman, Jesse Hession. "Humanitarian Encounters in Post-Conflict Aceh, Indonesia." Thesis, Harvard University, 2012. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10729.

Volonte, Gianna S. "Interpersonal Forgiveness: An Approach to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Oberlin College Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1621541859468987.

Amos, Julia. "Non-profits of peace : two West African case studies of mediation by conflict-resolution NGOs." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.571604.

Samper, Escobar Jose Jaime. "The politics of peace process in cities in conflict : the Medellin case as a best practice." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/59768.

Keating, Alexander M. (Alexander Matthew). "Redeveloping division : the legacy of conflict and contested space in post-peace treaty Belfast, Northern Ireland." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/59752.

Salhani, Jorge Antonio Salgado. "Jornalismo para a paz e os refugiados sírios /." Bauru, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/190720.

Doerrer, Sarah M. "Impact, Implementation, and Insights of Peace Education: A Case Study of the M.A. in Peace Studies and Conflict Transformation Program at the University of Rwanda." Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School, 2019. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/898.

Boyle, J. Patrick. "Intergroup Reconciliation in Post-conflict Contexts| The Juxtaposition of National Identification and Empathy." Thesis, The New School, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3626183.

Can individual differences moderate the deleterious effects of nationalistic attitudes on post-conflict peacemaking? In this work we investigate the relationship between national identification and attitudes toward reconciliation as moderated by dispositional and situational empathy. We hypothesize that the relationship between the socio-ideological concept of national identity and conciliatory attitudes is moderated by an individual difference variable unrelated to group processes, dispositional empathy, as well as by state-induced empathy. We tested this hypothesis in the Balkans, which have been the theatre of two wars in the 1990s, using samples of the Serbian population, and in the U.S., which has engaged in a drone war victimizing the Pakistani people. Study 1 results demonstrate the negative impact of national identification on attitudes toward reconciliation and reveal a moderating role of trait-level perspective-taking (a key aspect of empathy) in the relationship between national identification and conciliatory attitudes. Study 2 results confirm the effects of dispositional empathy and national identification on attitudes facilitating reconciliation. However, moderating effects of trait-empathy are absent and the state-empathy induction yields results that are inconsistent with those dispositional empathy effects found in Study 1.

Latessa, Jennifer. "The Prospect for Creative Collaboration: A Peace Park Between Myanmar and Thailand." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1397734705.

Thaller, Mark. "Corruption, Culture, Context & Killing| A Phenomenological Analysis of the Effects of Corruption upon Lethality and Feelings of Insecurity in Regions of Extreme Conflict." Thesis, Nova Southeastern University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10688261.

Like an elephant, while it may be difficult to describe, corruption is generally not difficult to recognize when observed (Tanzi, 1998, p. 564). Many countries have been, or are currently typified by both lethal conflict and massive corruption. Historically, post-conflict development programs have imposed policies of zero corruption, yet they routinely fail. Initial research into “corruption” also identified significant ambiguities and self-contradiction with the definition of corruption, itself. This study used an Existential Phenomenological methodology with 8 participants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan to: 1) redefine and model corruption within a global construct, 2) examine the current doctrine mandating zero tolerance for corruption, and 3) examine the potential for tolerating moderate levels of corruption in favor of reduced lethal violence. Corrupt behavior is alleged by this research to include financial as well as non-financial mechanisms, and is motivated by Human, Institutional and Cultural Factors of Corruption. This research robustly redefines corruption, and develops new theories/models to better explain corrupt behavior. These include the Corruption Hierarchy , the Corruption Pyramid and the Universal Corruption Model . The research was inconclusive with respect to the tolerance of corruption mitigating lethal conflict, but confirmed strong support for policies of zero tolerance. In redefining corruption, many political, social and cultural norms currently exhibited by nation states, including the United States, are corrupt if/when properly classified. I’m desperate about my country. You’ve got to be strong in my country. If you are weak, they will take you. (Jeremy from Iraq)

Herrera, Diana. "A Phenomenological Research Study on the Effects of Paternal Abandonment on Hispanic Women in South Florida and Their Conflict Management Skills." Thesis, Nova Southeastern University, 2019. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=13877767.

Chung, Da Woon. "Peace and conflict resolution activities in support of strengthening civil society's democratic capacity in South Korea : case studies on three civil society organisations working on peace and conflict resolution in South Korea." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/5488.

Coakwell, Jacob Richard. "Peace on Ukraine's Terms: Partition not Autonomy." The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu152270767363487.

Cole, Courtney E. "Organizing After Conflict: Narrative and Postcolonial Perspectives on Transitional Justice in Sierra Leone and the Liberian Diaspora." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1304704014.

Nweke, Chuks Petrus. "A Case Study Investigating the Interpretation and Implementation of the Transformative Mediation Technique." ScholarWorks, 2011. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/959.

Suleiman, Akef Venus. "Architecture for Positive Peace: The Role of Architecture in the Process of Peacebuilding within Conflict and Postwar Contexts." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1559058624350655.

Robiolle-Moul, Tina. "Peace education in fragile states| A case study of the influence of global discussions of peace education in conflict settings on national education policy and local NGO efforts in Afghanistan." Thesis, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Tufts University), 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10191417.

This dissertation assesses the influence of international standards and guidance on peace education on education policy and practice at the national and local levels in a fragile state. It also explores the critical factors that affect this influence—or the lack thereof. Utilizing a vertical case study approach that draws comparisons across multiple levels, this research examines the case of Afghanistan from 2002 to 2015. The author explored the origins and content of these recommendations at the global level, investigated their influence at the national level, and assessed what then is implemented at the local level through the work of a local non-governmental organization (NGO).

While there has been a growing presence of peace education in international recommendations and instruments promulgated by the United Nations, this study demonstrates how challenging it is for the international community to coordinate and harmonize its discourse on peace education—let alone to influence significantly a fragile state’s national education policy and practice. The international community’s recommendations on peace education had only a limited influence on the Afghan government’s education policy and practice. At the local level, the global recommendations did influence the work of a local Afghan NGO, Help the Afghan Children, and its peace education program launched in 2002. The success of this program has triggered the interest of the Ministry in developing and testing a national school-based peace education curriculum that could be taught in all government schools in the country. However, the lack of resources and political will represent a great obstacle for the program to be scaled up at the national level. Overall, this vertical study underlined different potentials for the integration of peace education in schools at the national versus the local level.

As a critical case, Afghanistan provided sufficient positive conditions to implement some global recommendations on peace education, despite the complexity of the local context. The critical factors that explain the limits of this influence are not specific to Afghanistan and can be found in other fragile states. If they are not addressed, the international community will face similar obstacles to the integration of peace education in other fragile states.

Wallace, Robert Daniel. "The determinants of conflict: North Korea's foreign policy choices, 1960-2011." Diss., Kansas State University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/17154.

Olukotun, Deji. "The spirit of National Peace Accord : the past, present and future of local forms of conflict resolution in the Western Cape." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/3708.

Elliot, Daniel J. "Exploring the relationship between educational inequality and group-level armed conflict within a country." Thesis, Georgetown University, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1554554.

Several researchers have found a link between inequality across groups within a country and armed conflict. However, this research has focused almost exclusively on inequalities in income and political access, forsaking other key societal dimensions such as education. In this article, I examine the link between educational inequality across groups within a country and armed conflict. I use data from the Worldwide Inequality Database on Education to create measures of educational inequality by gender, wealth, and country region for developing countries across the world. I combine these measures with data on income and political inequality in order to better establish the unique association between educational inequality and armed conflict. Overall, I find a positive association between educational inequality and the likelihood that a group within a given country and year will be involved in armed conflict. This association is particularly strong across gender groups and country regions. These findings have implications for conflict prediction, preventative diplomacy efforts, and domestic and international organizations focused on educational and human development.

Eriksson, Magnus. "Färdplanen & Genèveinitiativet : Förutsättningar för framsteg i den palestinsk-israeliska fredsprocessen." Thesis, Södertörn University College, School of Social Sciences, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-709.

The aim of this paper is to examine if the two latest Peace Plans in the Palestine-Israeli con-flict observes the sources of the conflict and presents measures in the purpose of solving them. The point of departure is William Azar’s theory of protracted social conflict (PSC). According to Azar, the internal sources of a PSC lies in three clusters of variables: the com-munal content of a society, the deprivation of human needs as an underlying source of PSC, and the role of the state in the deprivation or satisfaction of human needs. The study is de-signed as a multiple-case study where the units of analysis are the Roadmap to Peace and the Geneva Initiative. An analyze instrument, based on operationalization of Azar’s three clusters of internal sources of a PSC, is developed and used to analyze the Roadmap to peace and the Geneva Initiative. The conclusions are that the two Peace Plans observes and present meas-ures to solve the communal content of the conflict, but both Peace Plans are unsatisfactory in presenting measures aiming to solve problems related to the role of the state and human needs. Especially the acceptance need within the state is missing in the contents of the Peace Plans.

Powell-Bennett, Claudette. "The Influence of Culture on Conflict Management Styles and Willingness to Use Mediation| A Comparative Study of African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans (Jamaicans) in South Florida." Thesis, Nova Southeastern University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10623422.

Conflict management style preference and use of mediation within the Black population in the United States (US) is not well understood. The purpose of this study is to find out if there is a significant difference in conflict management style preference and use of mediation by African Americans and Afro-Caribbean (Jamaicans) living in the United States. Based on Hofstede's theory of individualism-collectivism cultural orientation, the US culture emphasizes individualism while Jamaica’s culture emphasizes collectivism. Responses were collected from 108 African American and Jamaican respondents anonymously, of which 96 were deemed usable. The Rahim (1983) Organizational Conflict Management Style Inventory was used to collect data on the five styles and was analyzed with the appropriate statistic test. A thematic analysis was used to analyze the text-based data gathered from the two open-ended questions at the end of the survey. The thematic analysis revealed two major themes: personal and workplace relationship conflict situations. It is recommended that future study includes three groups of Blacks instead of two groups. The preferred conflict management style from the combined group result is the compromising style. A significant difference was found in the obliging and compromising conflict management styles between African Americans and Jamaicans. No significant difference was found between the groups’ conflict management style and willingness to use mediation. The open-ended questions and individual textual description of conflict experience and willingness to use mediation were used to clarify the quantitative results and provide a better understanding of the similarities and differences among people of African descent from different cultural orientations.

Steinmeyer, John Kenneth. "An Examination of John Burton’s Method of Conflict Resolution and Its Applicability to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Scholar Commons, 2017. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6666.

Schillinger, Thomas. "Bystander Effect and Religious Group Affiliation: Terrorism and the Diffusion of Responsibility." ScholarWorks, 2014. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/126.

Cruikshank, Sally Ann. "Peace under Fire: Building the Media Agenda in Post-Genocide Rwanda." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1365154180.

Schmidt, Elizabeth. "Acculturation of American Racial Narratives in an Increasingly International Community." Kent State University Honors College / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ksuhonors155716253521604.

Bitterman, Michal, Viviana Lopez, and Fiona Wright. "A Bridge to Peace : Strategic Sustainable Development as an approach to Conflict Resolution." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Avdelningen för maskinteknik, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-2247.

Rage, Anne-Britt. "Achieving sustainable peace in post conflict societies : an evaluation of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/5302.

Book series

Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies

About this book series.

This agenda-setting series of research monographs, now more than a decade old, provides an interdisciplinary forum aimed at advancing innovative new agendas for peace and conflict studies in International Relations. Many of the critical volumes the series has so far hosted have contributed to new avenues of analysis directly or indirectly related to the search for positive, emancipatory, and hybrid forms of peace. Constructive critiques of liberal peace, hybrid peace, everyday contributions to peace, the role of civil society and social movements, international actors and networks, as well as a range of different dimensions of peace (from peacebuilding, statebuilding, youth contributions, photography, and many case studies) have been explored so far. The series raises important political questions about what peace is, whose peace and peace for whom, as well as where peace takes place. In doing so, it offers new and interdisciplinary perspectives on the development of the international peace architecture, peace processes, UN peacebuilding, peacekeeping and mediation, statebuilding, and localised peace formation in practice and in theory. It examines their implications for the development of local peace agency and the connection between emancipatory forms of peace and global justice, which remain crucial in different conflict-affected regions around the world. This series’ contributions offer both theoretical and empirical insights into many of the world's most intractable conflicts, also investigating increasingly significant evidence about blockages to peace.

This series is indexed by Scopus.

Oliver P. Richmond,
Annika Björkdahl,
Gëzim Visoka

Book titles in this series

The transformation of peace.

Oliver P. Richmond
Copyright: 2024

Available Renditions

Existential Risks in Peace and Conflict Studies

Noah B. Taylor
Copyright: 2023

Alternative Perspectives on Peacebuilding

Theories and Case Studies

Mark S. Cogan
Hidekazu Sakai
Copyright: 2022

How People Respond to Violence

Everyday Peace and the Maoist Conflict in India

Monica Carrer

Multidisciplinary Futures of UN Peace Operations

Alexander Gilder
David Curran
Georgina Holmes
Fiifi Edu-Afful

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Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies

Ph.D. Dissertations

Completed Dissertations

"ever-widening circles": private voluntary development, colonialism, and arab palestinians, 1930-1960, francis bonenfant-juwong.

Peace Studies & History

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I engage questions about how historical actors envisioned the best way to approach “the local” as outsiders as they grappled with the collateral damage of processes of urban-industrial modernization. I use multi-archival research in the United States, England, Israel, and the West Bank to track how American private voluntary organizations and British colonial authorities deployed a shared strain of rural development among Palestinian Arabs amidst the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Advocates of rural development were ambivalent about modernization and sought ways of nation-building that enabled local societies to retain their integrity and some measure of control over socioeconomic change. Towards this end, advocates promoted a rural development that was practical: immediately relevant for daily life and therefore very dependent on local contexts and the experiences and abilities of the students themselves. In this way, I encourage peacebuilding scholars to take seriously the “everyday” of colonial praxis and push historians of U.S. development towards the “everyday” of specific projects. And I argue that rural development was the predecessor to community development and that, rather than Asia, it is to the Middle East that U.S. community development primarily owes its emergence. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

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Threat, Risk, and Repression: Exploring State-Sponsored Political Violence from a Prospect Theory Approach

Jessica brandwein.

Peace Studies & Political Science

What are the causes and consequences of state-sponsored political violence against civilians and how can international actors limit such violence? This dissertation takes a prospect theory approach to understanding these questions, diverging from the typical expected-utility framework presented in the existing literature. The primary argument is that governments decide whether to perpetrate violence against their citizens based on whether that government is operating from a domain of gain or a domain of loss. The result is that distinct governments will respond to similar types of threats with difference levels of violence depending on their domain. This dissertation consists of an introduction and three chapters which use quantitative methods to study several consequences of this argument. Chapter 2 explores the causes of state repression, arguing that a government’s domain influences how governments frame threats and the level of risk a government will accept to eliminate those threats. A statistical analysis of government responses to dissent among African countries supports this argument, showing that governments in the domain of loss repress low levels of dissent at higher rates than governments in the domain of gain. Chapter 3 considers the effects of government violence, examining how the killing of civilians in intrastate conflict influences its outcome. This chapter argues that a government’s domain shapes its use of civilian victimization, which in turn affects the conflict’s outcome. A global study of intrastate conflicts finds that the patterns of violence perpetrated by governments in the domain of loss are more likely to lead to rebel-preferred conflict outcomes, while those used by governments in the domain of gain increase the probability of a government-preferred outcome. Chapter 4 looks at how international actors influence the use of state repression, proposing that the effect of interventions on the use of state-sponsored violence is conditioned on government domain. Quantitative testing provides some limited support for this theory. In combination, these chapters suggest that utilizing a prospect theory framework can improve our understanding of state-sponsored political violence.

Intersectionality, Bureaucratic Logic, and the Israeli Welfare State

Peace Studies & Sociology

The goal of the welfare state is to universally provide social services to all its members thus ensuring an equal division of state resources. In contrast, the Israeli welfare state has linked its welfare policies to its Zionist goals, creating different levels of access to public resources for different social groups. Nevertheless, most research on the Israeli welfare state focuses on one social group, specific welfare benefits, or particular periods and neglects to examine the connection between the prolonged Israel-Palestinian conflict and the inequalities of the Israeli welfare state. This dissertation identifies and evaluates how the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict interacts with other oppressive forces, such as sexism and racism, to create and perpetuate inequalities in the Israeli welfare state in the 2000s. Using an intersectional lens, I examine how the prolonged conflict, which relies upon and reinforces a binary of Jews versus Palestinians, affects Israeli civil lives in non-military but no less disruptive and violent ways.

The omnipresence binary of Jews versus Palestinians shapes what I refer to as the bureaucratic logic of the Israeli welfare state − the logic by which the welfare state exercises its power over those it is supposed to serve. The bureaucratic logic includes institutional procedures such as legislation and regulations and discursive processes such as court hearings and decisions. I interrogate this logic using an in-depth analysis of three Israeli Supreme Court cases representing the three most marginalized Israeli ethno-racial groups: Ethiopian Jewish women, Mizrahi Jewish women, and Palestinian women. Each case introduces the welfare state around a different subject related to motherhood, an entry ticket for women’s social acceptance in Israel’s pro-natal society: adoption, public housing, and hospitalization grants. I analyze each case using a multi-method qualitative approach, including legal archeology, discourse and content analysis, and in-depth interviews. This multi-method approach allows to identify patterns across ethno-racial lines, derive theoretical conclusions from a small number of cases, and uncover the connection between judicial decisions, discursive reasoning, and institutional procedures.

My findings show that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict centers Israeli social understandings around the binary of Jews versus Palestinians, denying the systematic racism of mothers of color. The bureaucratic logic of the Israeli welfare state erases the social location of mothers of color, denying the relevance of ethno-racial claims and their intersections to Israeli reality and mothers of color marginalization. It also obscures how the Israeli welfare state constructs mothers of color as “bad mothers,” ensuring their ongoing dependency on welfare aid, thus justifying state interventions in their lives. My findings further show that the bureaucratic logic turns the welfare state into a wrestling arena between the state and its residents in which mothers of color who need the state’s social assistance are forced to repeatedly prove they are entitled to be included within the boundaries of the welfare state and the Israeli collective. Consequently, the Israeli welfare state reproduces the ethno-racial and ethnonational boundaries and hierarchies of Israeli society, guaranteeing the preservation of the Israeli power structure.

Civil Resistance and the Processes of Contentious Politics in Egypt, 2010-2015

Matthew j. chandler.

Egyptian pro-democracy activists mobilized two major uprisings in recent years: one ending Hosni Mubarak’s decades-long rule in February 2011, and the other precipitating a coup against newly-elected president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Prior research indicates that nonviolent campaigns succeed more often and are more likely to result in democracy than armed insurgencies. The theory, in essence, is that nonviolent campaigns better facilitate popular participation, which simultaneously serves to mobilize more potent campaigns and encourage democratic governance. But that explanation is inadequate when civil resistance has mixed outcomes, as in the case of Egypt. Therefore, this dissertation shifts the analytical perspective to the processes of contentious political transitions in which civil resistance campaigns are embedded. It focuses on the years 2010 through 2015 in Egypt, using the two major uprisings as a paired comparison to develop the theorized linkage between civil resistance and democratization. It finds that civil resistance in Egypt operated through multiple mechanisms that interacted dynamically over time and were sensitive to changes in the wider structure of political relations. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Politics after Autonomy: Repression, Rebellion, and Revision

Angela chesler.

Territorial autonomy is on the rise. More states than ever before are yielding political authority to subnational polities, transforming the fundamental architecture of governance in the modern state. A significant driver of this “devolution revolution” is the perception that territorial autonomy provides a vehicle for peace and democracy in divided societies. Yet, territorial self-governance has proven remarkably deadly in unexpected ways. In contexts as diverse as Nigeria, Russia, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, devolutions of territorial autonomy have been followed by government military interventions, state-led civilian massacres, and armed conflict.

This project investigates the causes and downstream consequences of political violence in the context of territorial autonomy, addressing three interrelated questions: 1) How does territorial autonomy affect state violence against civilians?; 2) How does state violence shape political power and resistance in autonomous territories?; and 3) How and under what conditions does political violence impact the survival of autonomous territories? To answer these questions, I develop a new theory of regional consolidation that explains mass civilian killing as a tool for national actors to reassert authority in autonomous territories. I argue that territorial autonomy activates revanchist imperatives among state leaders, who engage violence to eliminate rival factions from the subnational political arena. While mass civilian killing is an effective tool for consolidating regional authority, it has the unintended consequence of provoking violent political mobilization leading to armed conflict. Armed conflict, in turn, has detrimental consequences for the survival of autonomous regions. When violent conflict breaks out in self-governing territories, it provides a pretense for national actors to implement centralizing reforms that erode autonomy.

The dissertation’s empirical investigations examine these dynamics through a series of cross-national quantitative analyses. I develop the Territorial Autonomy Dataset, a new geo-referenced dataset that identifies all autonomous regions globally from 1989 to 2019. To overcome methodological challenges related to selection effects and endogeneity, I leverage innovative statistical techniques in the counter-factual estimation framework. The results analyses produce three key findings. First, while the proponents of autonomy imagine stability, the fundamental substance of autonomy reforms creates new incentives for violence against civilians. Second, state violence in autonomous regions nearly always triggers armed uprisings. Finally, violent conflict itself reduces territorial autonomy. Collectively, these findings highlight the circular process through which states counteract power losses in self-governing regions through violence, and how the downstream instability ultimately fuels the structural erosion of autonomous institutions.

A Long Road to Canaan: The Capuchin Missionaries and the Rise of Liberation Theology in Eastern Nicaragua, 1939-1979

This dissertation investigates the mission established by the Detroit Province Capuchins in eastern Nicaragua from 1939-1979. Its emphasis is a transformation in the missionaries’ ministry enacted in 1967, which involved the adoption of new experimental techniques. The central historical contention is that this transformation led to the creation and diffusion of liberation theology in Nicaragua. The revisionist portrait of liberation theology emphasized here challenges existing understandings of the way this religious movement arose throughout Latin America.

The dissertation contends that the overlapping socio-political movements of the “Long Sixties” (1959-1973) destabilized the ideas about Catholicism and the priesthood that the Capuchins had championed in Nicaragua since the 1930s. This period cast them into a crisis that climaxed in 1967. Dozens of other missionaries in Latin America experienced similar vocational crises. A small subset of the missionary community, however, did not respond to the events that shaped the Long Sixties with bewilderment. These pioneering priests instead utilized experimental pastoral methodologies to reinvent the priesthood for the unique demands of the setting. The Capuchins, and many of their peers, turned to these experimentalists as a way of resolving their vocational crisis. In this way, early experiments, which would later be formalized and systemized as liberation theology, proliferated on an ad hoc basis across Latin America.

The Capuchins borrowed techniques from their peers and modified them to fit their unique circumstances. In particular, they borrowed three practices. First, from Leo Mahon, a missioner from Chicago to Panama City, they adopted the Delegates of the Word. The Delegates initiative involved training local laymen to act as surrogate priests. From the Society of Foreign Missions in Choluteca, Honduras, the Capuchins imitated the Celebration of the Word, a reinvention of the mass characterized by group discussion of biblical passages. Finally, from the Brazilian theorist Paulo Freire, the Capuchins enacted the pedagogy of the oppressed and enshrined “conscientization” as the primary goal of their mission. Over the next decade, these practices evolved into a rigorous, coherent system, the missionary pedagogy of the oppressed, a nascent form of liberation theology. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

'Unlocking Human Dignity': A Theology of Liberation from the Context of U.S. Immigrant Detention and Deportation

Colleen cross.

Peace Studies & Theology

The dominant political narrative within the United States often portrays the current immigration crisis along the US-Mexico border as one rooted in economic opportunism and criminal activity. In recent years, however, there has been a growing recognition, both domestically and internationally, of the significant levels of violence contributing to this mass human displacement. While a large number of migrants coming from this context have considerable protection needs, they generally do not qualify for protection under the traditional definition of a refugee. Instead, they undergo additional levels of trauma as they are criminalized, detained, and ultimately deported.

In light of the complex challenges posed by global migration and its impact on the human person, this dissertation brings peace studies, Latin American liberation theology, US Hispanic and Latinx theology, and migration theology into conversation, seeking to develop a constructive theology of liberation from the context of US immigrant detention and deportation. While it endeavors to develop a theology of liberation for the victims, it also examines the need for liberation for the perpetrators—for US society and for many in the US Church. Arguing for an expansion of the theological category of ‘the poor’ in light of the realities of displacement, detention, and deportation, I argue for correlating levels of liberation. My thesis is that although liberation in this context must necessarily be understood on structural, political, cultural, and ideological levels, it must also be centrally understood as the reclaiming and ‘unlocking’ of human dignity that has been ‘dimmed and defiled’ through the multi-layered violence found within the US immigration system.

Defining Critical Feminist Justpeace: Women's Peacebuilding Praxis and Feminist Political Thought

Karie cross.

The central concerns of my dissertation are the meaning of gender-just peace and the methods for pursuing it. Entering an ongoing debate within peace studies about the United Nations’ top-down, institutions-oriented “liberal peace,” I use ethnographic research with women’s peacebuilding groups in India alongside feminist political thought to argue for a “critical feminist justpeace ,” developed from the bottom-up and taking the diverse experiences of marginalized women as motivation. Women in Manipur, India, try to build peace across ethnic, religious, and class-based boundaries. I analyze their practices, synthesizing them into a peacebuilding “praxis”—reflection combined with action with the goal of transformation—which we can fruitfully compare to Western feminist thought. This comparison of praxis and theory suggests that where the liberal peace fails women, a radically inclusive critical feminist justpeace will come closer to success. Such a peace is never achieved, but is rather an on-going process of contestation and relationship-building across divisions of power and privilege. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Building and Burning Bridges: Solidarity and Contention among Peace Activists in Mindanao

Hyunjin deborah kwak.

My dissertation explains how activist groups’ foci of attention and interaction patterns generate different stylistic orientations toward action. This study addresses my broader theoretical interest in the power of cultural practice to affect group identity and collective behavior. My dissertation is based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mindanao, Philippines, in the immediate aftermath of signing the historic peace accord that put an end to four decades of armed conflict. Civil society organizations and networks of Christian, Moro, and Indigenous peace activists played a critical role in the peace accord negotiations and social reconciliation efforts. By paying special attention to important extra-deliberative processes—the perceptual, interactional and emotional dynamics—of the peace activists, I theorize that activist groups’ spheres of influence and patterns of interaction shape their organizational foci, including activists’ theories of how to achieve social change and the types of project they choose to pursue. I analyze two distinct foci of attention found among Mindanao peace activists: these different foci in turn, inform and sustain two different styles of collective action: that of position-taking advocates and community bridge-builders. Organizational focus constrains group action over time, and differences in foci among activist groups often lead to tensions when they try to cooperate within the same network. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

To Be More Fully Alive: John of the Cross and Judith Butler on Transformation of the Self

Heather m. dubois.

My dissertation develops a theory for intrapersonal praxis that enables solidarity, justice, and peace in the face of alienation, oppression, and violence. It contributes to two schools of thought, mystical-political theology, as represented by Johann Baptist Metz, and conflict transformation, as represented by John Paul Lederach. I combine the resources of a religious classic and a contemporary critical theory of subject formation to address identity-based impasse. Namely, I employ the spiritual guidance and mystical anthropology of John of the Cross and the ethics and philosophical anthropology of Judith Butler. Drawing from John, I describe transformation of the self in terms of virtue, vice, and practices of attentive receptivity. Drawing from Butler, I describe transformation in terms of socio-political power, psychic processes, and practices of critical inquiry. In addition, I employ the affect theory of psychologist and philosopher Silvan Tomkins to describe the formation and transformation of patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. With these elements, I develop an ecosystemic working theory of the transforming self.

With this theory about the transforming self, I argue for a set of dispositions and practices that can foster positive transformation in and through ambivalent socio-material ecosystems. Specifically, I argue for intrapersonal praxis that develops relational sensibility, defined as the capacity to experience, perceive, understand, and participate in the dynamic complexity of living. I use ‘sensibility’ holistically, connoting responsiveness to stimuli through the physiological senses, affective reactions, and mental perceptions. Relational sensibility addresses two critiques of modernity articulated by philosophers Stephen Toulmin and Charles Taylor: the truncation of the human person and the systematization of human life. Increasing sensibility can enable a second form of intrapersonal praxis that I call re-scripting. ‘Re-scripting’ combines insights from Tomkins’ theory about personal patterns and Butler’s theory about social norms to offer an understanding of intentional transformation of the self as activity at the nexus of the personal and the social. Since impasse is characterized by the exhaustion of readily available means, if there is to be movement through impasse, something new must happen. My theory for praxis articulates how this might occur at the level of the self. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Ideology and Authoritarian Persistence: Shaping the Public Sphere in North Korea and Burma

Alexander dukalskis.

This dissertation examines how circumscription and manipulation of the public sphere contributes to the persistence of authoritarian regimes. It argues that while ruling ideologies of such regimes may differ in content, they rely on similar sets of underlying mechanisms designed to impact interactions in the public sphere. It analyzes how the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) under Kim Jong Il and Burma/Myanmar under successive military juntas have attempted to legitimate themselves as military regimes in the post-Cold War era. The dissertation illustrates how the ideologies of the DPRK and the Burmese junta worked to forestall critiques about authoritarian rule — even if many citizens were dissatisfied with the state’s authoritarian practices — by limiting and manipulating discussion in the political public sphere. Data is drawn from domestically-oriented media as well as 75 semi-structured interviews with North Koreans and Burmese conducted in 2011 and 2012. While the study empirically focuses on the DPRK and Myanmar, in broader comparative and analytical chapters it also points to the generalizability of the argument, with implications for theories of ideology, the study of authoritarianism, and debates about how closed societies change. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Peace Education for the World: People-to-People Programs, American Youth, & U.S. Power, 1946-1991

If young people are born ‘peaceful’—without prejudiced or militaristic attitudes—why must they also be meticulously taught it through ‘peace education’ programs? Combining historical archival research from five U.S. governmental, university, and other English-language libraries along with critical discourse analysis, this dissertation makes interventions in three fields: Peace Studies, Critical Youth Studies, and the historical sub-field of the “U.S. in the World.” This dissertation surveys how American social scientists, especially social psychologists, produced knowledge about the nature of ‘child development’ as well as ‘intergroup contact’ from the interwar period through the early Cold War years. It also considers how these theories influenced the design of the most popular private and governmental ‘people-to-people’ peace education programs. Finally, this dissertation examines why U.S. government officials and policymakers came to believe that these programs were useful to the expansion of U.S. power in the world during and after the Second World War and into the early Cold War period.

This dissertation demonstrates that these various people-to-people programs of the past rarely produced the desired results. Policymakers found that people-to-people exchanges did not automatically influence foreign audiences to want to follow the, purported, American way of ‘democratic living’ or to accept U.S. foreign policy objectives. However, they did help solidify a dominant theory of change undergirding the design of mainstream American people-to-people programs. These liberal programs tended to favor a combination of education about select ‘other’ groups of people and, increasingly, mediated interpersonal contact with these ‘other’ groups. Consequently, changing individual attitudes, via interpersonal contact, was emphasized over other possible structural changes, such as addressing discriminatory practices and institutions. Over time, these programs also came to target ‘youth’ as a distinct category of persons assumed to be most suitable for these programs. In being named the ideal ‘ambassadors of peace’ and the best participants for various people-to-people programs, a category of persons named ‘youth’ was, in effect, transformed into the recipients most in need of an education for ‘peace’.

Pluriversal Peacebuilding: Decolonial Democracy, Religion, and the Epistemic Politics of Peace

Garrett fitzgerald.

Despite its commitment to the reduction and transformation of various types of violence, the field of peacebuilding largely relies upon Westernized forms of knowledge that exclude indigenous and other non-Westernized epistemologies. This privileging of certain forms of knowledge and modes of knowledge production risks implicating the field, as presently constituted, in patterns of epistemic violence traceable to the enduring legacies of colonization. Decolonial theory challenges Westernized scholars and practitioners of peacebuilding to fight this exclusion through the cultivation of a future in which many non-Westernized ways of knowing and being in the world can co-exist without fear of erasure—a condition described as pluriversality .

Drawing insights from decolonial theory, Western political theory, and the theory and practice of peacebuilding, this project examines the possibility of developing approaches to peacebuilding dedicated to the pursuit of pluriversality by exploring decolonial claims that certain shared concepts—potentially including peace itself— can function as a “connectors” through which to pursue pluriversal dialogue between Westernized and non-Westernized ways of knowing and being in the world. However, recurrent failures within the field of peacebuilding to engage in sufficiently equitable dialogue with non-Westernized understandings of peace indicate an urgent need for new theoretical and practical resources to enable Westernized scholars and practitioners to participate in genuinely pluriversal dialogue.

To aid in this process, this project develops a simultaneously deconstructive and dialogical approach to pluriversal dialogue from a Westernized positionality that dramatically expands upon existing investigations into the decolonial applications of the work of Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The project then tests the resources toward pluriversal dialogue gleaned from Wittgenstein against the “connector” treated at the greatest length in the decolonial literature: democracy. Focusing on the work of two Western democratic theorists—Chantal Mouffe and James Tully—who draw on similar Wittgensteinian resources to engage with non-Westernized forms of democratic theory and practice, the project indicates the potential risks and rewards of using these resources as a method of approaching pluriversal dialogue around specific “connectors” from a Westernized positionality.

The project concludes by returning to the question of whether peace (like democracy) possesses a similar potential to function as a “connector” around which to engage in pluriversal dialogue. Given the presence of non-Westernized accounts of peace that reflect the decolonial values of pluriversality, the project concludes that pluriversal peacebuilding is possible, but will require a fundamental shift in the epistemic politics of the field of peacebuilding.

Narratives of Power: History Education and Statecraft in Uganda

Ashley greene.

“Narratives of Power” examines the interaction between history education and statecraft in Uganda since 1925. Tracing the development of history curricula through Uganda’s transition from British colony to independent state, I explore how political elites have appropriated history education in their quests to win the hearts, minds, and votes of young people. I use a mixed-methods approach, drawing on archival material, school curricula, and oral history interviews with curriculum specialists, education officers, and history teachers from nine secondary schools around the country.

Chapters one and two examine colonial narratives of exploration and empire, first from the pages of British syllabuses, and then from the reactions of African intellectuals who denounced them as colonial brainwashing. Next, I examine the efforts of educated African elites whose hopes of reclaiming history as a story of African triumph and platform for national identity clashed with the reality of Ugandan social and political cleavages. Chapter four investigates the stagnation of curriculum reform under the National Resistance Movement, and history teachers’ reactions to Uganda’s current curriculum. Finally, using a case study about a recently implemented secondary-school program known as patriotism clubs, I illustrate that far from abandoning historical reconstruction, Uganda’s government is engaging with the politicization of history in ways that try to bypass traditional curricular channels.

I argue that historical reconstruction has been, and continues to be, at the forefront of government attempts to communicate political messages to young people. Unable to control how the past is taught and interpreted in the formal school system, elites are employing new strategies that use extracurricular programs to bypass non-state actors whose views might bring them into contention with the state’s imagined past. The neglect of Ugandan history in the education system and the emergence of patriotism clubs should be seen as congruent phenomena; the former limits historical narratives that might delegitimize the state while the latter allows the NRM to use history as a more effective tool of state power. My findings indicate that future studies of education and statecraft must expand to include the changing spaces in which students are encountering state narratives about the past. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Our Home a Refuge?: Trauma-Related Cognitive Distortions, Community, and Perceptions of Asylum-Seekers and Migrants among U.S. Military Veterans

Katherine grein.

Peace Studies & Psychology

Trauma-related cognitive distortions have been linked to mental health outcomes such as posttraumatic stress for U.S. veterans; however, research has not yet examined links between these distortions (of self, guilt, and safety) and perceptions of specific other groups (e.g., asylum-seekers), or perceptions of security in one’s environment (e.g., community). The current study aimed to explore connections between these variables in a sample of N =101 veterans (87.1% male) across 3 time points, hypothesizing that higher T1 trauma-related cognitive distortions would predict higher T2 threat perceptions of asylum-seekers and lower T2 security in the community; T2 threat perceptions of asylum-seekers would mediate the association between T1 distortions and T3 security; T2 security would mediate the association between T1 distortions and T3 threat perceptions of asylum-seekers; and exposure to psychotherapeutic treatment would moderate the association between initial trauma exposure and trauma-related cognitions, with cognitions lower for treatment-exposed veterans. Overall, results of the path analysis models did not support these hypotheses. A post-hoc hierarchical regression analysis using only T1 data, however, suggests some support for associations between higher trauma-related cognitive distortions and lower security in the community ( β = -0.53), and higher threat perceptions of asylum-seekers and lower emotional security in the community ( β = -0.21). These findings have important implications for the role of trauma-related cognitive distortions in veterans’ psychosocial health and sense of security within their social ecological space, as well as how they may view and make political decisions about groups that may increasingly share that space (i.e., asylum-seekers and migrants).

Church as Sanctuary: A Preferential Option for the Displaced and Persecuted Poor

Leo guardado.

This dissertation argues that sanctuary is a pillar of ecclesial identity and a concretization of what it means to be a church of the poor in the United States. As persons once again flee El Salvador and other Central American countries where unbearable levels of violence have essentially created a low-intensity war akin to the 1980s, the church in the United States is faced with the challenge of protecting the humanity of “unauthorized” communities seeking refuge from governmental structures that kill through persecution and deportation. Throughout history as well as in contemporary politics, sanctuary’s capacity to interrupt and resist processes of legalized violence has made it a contentious concept and practice. Among communities of faith the possibility of providing church sanctuary can become a point of controversy and division rather than unity. Within the Roman Catholic Church there is a critical need to better understand the theological foundations of sanctuary and the ways that it incarnates the nature and mission of the church as a sacrament of salvation in and for the world so that bishops and laity alike can appropriately discern their participation, or the cost of failing to protect the displaced and persecuted poor in their midst.

In response to the arrival of displaced Salvadorans in the 1980s, church sanctuary became a widespread practice that raised questions about the church itself, its responsibility to protect, and sanctuary’s potential to transform political systems and construct a more human society. This historical and political context becomes the foundation for a systematic theological reflection where I retrieve ancient traditions of refuge and sanctuary and place them in dialogue with the ecclesiology of Vatican II; analyze the sacramentality of the poor in Oscar Romero’s preaching and witness in relation to the vision of a church of the poor as expressed at the Medellin conference; and develop four categories that constitute church as sanctuary: refuge, healing, holiness, and salvation. In a world marred by dehumanizing violence, sanctuary is a necessary mark of ecclesial existence, for it is a salvific practice not only for those whose life is threatened but for the church itself. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

From Homer to Hemingway: The Place of the Soldier in Political Thought

Caleb hamman.

This dissertation examines the place of the soldier in political life. Through close readings of Homer, Thucydides, Tocqueville, and Hemingway, I analyze the political existence of the soldier in different types of political community. The main movement I trace is one in which the original Homeric image of the soldierly ideal is inverted in the modern world. Drawing upon Tocqueville and Hemingway, I argue that the American soldier is a figure not honored by American society. The American disposition toward the soldier tends to be characterized by patriotic feeling and sympathetic sentiment. The unity of soldierly practices and meanings encountered in Homer—around honor and glory, and wounding and healing—collapses, I suggest, for the soldier in modern society. The reciprocity established between soldier and city in the classical polis—a reciprocity I find in Thucydides—does not obtain for the soldier in the modern world. I argue that the American soldier suffers as a consequence of not being honored. Drawing upon Homer and Hemingway, I suggest that the withholding of honor from the soldier obstructs the soldier’s ability to heal from the wounds of war. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Monotheism and the Paradox of Intolerance: The Refusal to Divinize Victims and the Mosaic Distinction

In a shrinking and globalizing world, with many conflicts stemming from religious or ideological differences, how are we to regard monotheism’s potential for inspiring violent absolutism? Discussions of monotheism’s political consequences often emphasize either its “intolerance” of other gods and religions as a source of bigotry and conflict, on the one hand, or emphasize monotheism as a source of pacific, universalistic, transcendent tolerance on the other. But both approaches fail to give monotheism’s “intolerance” its due. I argue that monotheism’s intolerance opens up historic potentials that are both enlightening and dangerous: it dissolved the ancient link between God and the political sphere, helped us see past the distortions of divinized politics, and deepened concern for the victims of politics—while it nonetheless makes possible a uniquely absolutist, violence. By comparison, polytheistic “tolerance” does not necessarily make for a liberating vision of inclusion and diversity. To argue this, I construct an account of monotheism’s intolerance—as a “refusal to divinize victims” and a prohibition of representing the Absolute—and its relevance to pluralistic coexistence today. This includes critically weaving together the mimetic theory of René Girard, the monotheistic scholarship of Jan Assmann et al, and the social theory of Chantal Mouffe, treating their ideas as mutually illuminating. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

"When the Ukrainian World Was Destroyed": Genocidal Narrative Convergence and Stakeholder Interactions during National Crises

Kristina hook.

Peace Studies & Anthropology

In the wake of complex, contested disasters, narratives of suffering often emerge as integral features of attempts to rebuild cosmologies, particularly when such catastrophes are perpetrated by other humans. Due to the social negotiations and fluidity inherent in these processes, influential stakeholders can play an outsized role in using these discursive political tools for nation-building and solidarity. Genocidal narratives of suffering exist as a special and morally untouchable case due to their emotional salience and scope. Despite our knowledge that such narratives of suffering can impact sociopolitical processes, how these processes unfold, particularly as they are driven by influential stakeholders, is under-theorized. This project examines the interactions of four groups of social actors who frequently interact with Holodomor genocide narratives—lawyers, academics, politicians, and activists—in the context of modern Ukraine. The 1932-1933 Ukrainian Holodomor (“killing by hunger”) refers to an artificially induced famine in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Ukraine that killed an estimated 4.5 million people and changed Ukrainian society forever.Since Ukraine’s 1991 independence, narratives regarding the Holodomor have grown from a diffuse set of suppressed memories into an officially-sanctioned charter story for Ukrainian national identity as nuances decreased and stakeholder narratives converged during a series of escalating national crises.To substantiate this argument, two overarching, interlinking themes are explored: 1) the extreme cosmological destruction (i.e., the intentional, concurrent targeting a group’s biological existence and social world) caused by the Holodomor itself, and how this devastation contributed to 2) modern national identity ambiguities that paved the way for the pronounced role that influential stakeholders played in steering conversations of who Ukrainians were, are, and should be.Using more than 1,000 pages of qualitative data gathered by intensive interviewing with 100 national-level stakeholders across politics, law, academia, and activism, I illustrate how the Holodomor today is laden with representational meanings signifying Ukraine’s contemporary reality as a borderland caught between its Eastern past and Western aspirational future.Contextualizing this argument through 2.5 years of ethnographic fieldwork and participant-observation in Ukraine, I explore Holodomor narrative functions—including reclamation, resistance, absolution, and camouflage—and demonstrate the salience of this event and its legacy in understanding contemporary Ukraine. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Agency under Duress: A Political Theological Approach to Peacebuilding

Janna hunter-bowman.

This dissertation offers an account of religious actors in situations of duress. The thesis is that the kinds of actions performed by war-torn communities in Colombia, South America, indicate a kind of agency that is undertheorized in peace studies but that can be illuminated by theology in a way that contributes to peace studies. It argues that messianic theology is the best theoretical framework for illuminating peacebuilding agents under duress, like the featured communities. After all, their practices are subaltern, vulnerable, and transformative. Moreover, moral judgment is key for neutralizing and counteracting crisis.

The communities live in a world at war and experience time in ways that enable and mandate their agency of witness in situations of overt violence—independent of state power. They therefore seem to vindicate John Howard Yoder’s theopolitical messianic vision, which now appears ambivalent. This dissertation engages Yoder in a critical manner.

Gustavo Gutierrez suggests that a messianic orientation conditions participation in linear (state-oriented) processes and contributes “to the nations” accordingly. This is because, for Gutierrez, there is much still to come in the messianic breaks. They set gradual eschatological processes in motion. In contrast with the messianic ruptures, movement toward wholeness requires engaging institutions and epistemic “others” in gradual time.

The interplay of the two eschatologies—messianic and gradual—grounds a flexible framework for peacebuilding that allows for change and variance in context. A key contribution is the framework’s flexible account of the state, attuned to debates about the emergence of the “religion” and “the state.” This dissertation testifies to multiple forms of power, freedom, and agency contributing to peace, and the moral worlds embedded therein. Foregrounding the entanglements of both theological and political worlds has the potential to make peacebuilding more strategic. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

The Role of Regimes of Cooperation in the Well-Being of Rohingya Refugees in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Fort Wayne

Helal mohammed khan.

This dissertation examines agency, cooperation, and well-being in the context of refugee resettlement. Past studies of refugee resettlement have explored fractures, fissions, and conflicts in the complex geopolitics and economics that govern it, often citing mistrust and lack of hope among participants. Despite that, millions of refugees have resettled worldwide over the past decades, becoming citizens and legal residents in their new homes. How do refugees survive, adapt and even thrive against the odds portrayed by multiple studies on refugee resettlement? This intriguing question guides my research, looking into dynamic processes and institutions underlying the growth of Rohingya refugee micro-communities in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Fort Wayne. My principal finding is that refugees pursue cooperation and hope as the primary mechanism to attain well-being in a new country, mediated by institutions such as cultural centers and faith-based organizations through place- and space-making practices.

I develop two novel theoretical concepts – “the abling refugee” and “regimes of cooperation” – through this study. The abling refugee speaks to refugees’ progressive interactions with people, processes, and institutions in their resettlement locations from a place of agency, guided by the sense of hope undiminished through their journeys. Regimes of cooperation is a spatial behavioral concept encompassing the everyday dynamics of cooperation, wherein refugee-led institutions create spaces for interaction between diverse refugees and other actors of resettlement, making cooperation an iterative, ongoing process rather than a formal or policy‑based exercise. Refugees cooperate to achieve well-being related to education, housing, healthcare, citizenship, and spirituality, closely supported by people and institutions that act as brokers within the larger networks of support that connect related providers to their recipients. This approach to studying cooperation invites attention to the importance of everyday peace and well-being and calls for exploring their physical dimensions. It entails observing how refugees become active makers of their new geographical landscapes by accessing various spaces and eventually managing, sustaining, and developing them. The study ties cooperation, hope, and well-being as observable phenomena that people actively engage with and cultivate while seeking to move beyond the traumas of violent displacement and perils of finding homes in far-off lands.

Good and Bad Apologies: Determinants of Successful State Apologies

Why do some state apologies that address past atrocities succeed at bringing about reconciliation while others fail? Under what conditions would the recipients of apologies find them satisfactory and acceptable? In order to close the gaps between theory and practice regarding the efficacy of state apology, I identify and test four causal factors that can affect victims’ reception of state apologies. These factors are: the manner in which expressions of apology are made (who speaks what, when, where, and how), behavioral consistency of the apologizer, conspicuous opportunism of the apologizer, and prior communicative interactions. I conduct mixed-methods research that incorporates Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and in-depth case studies, using primary sources such as media reports, government statements, organizational reports, and in-depth interviews. By assessing whether and how certain features of an apology affect its reception, this research aims to introduce cross-case empirical analyses and a new dataset on state apologies that could be shared and used for future research on apology and reconciliation. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Armed with Good Intentions? Explaining Arms Embargo Compliance

Kathrin kranz.

My dissertation—“Armed with good intentions? Explaining arms embargo compliance”—investigates why major arms exporters have come not only to comply with international arms embargoes, but also to embrace them as policy instruments. I examine and contrast the historical developments in two leading arms exporting nations, Germany and the United Kingdom. During the past 50 years, these countries moved away from treating arms embargoes as a nuisance they reluctantly navigated—and sometimes violated—to championing them as policy instruments. Based on rich case studies of the arms embargo regimes against South Africa and China, and interviews with policymakers and archival research, the dissertation finds that the growing strength of the arms embargo norm has made noncompliance a costly choice for arms exporting states. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

¡Presente! Political Theology at the Gates of Ft. Benning

Kyle lambelet.

What does it mean politically, morally and theologically to claim that the dead are presente ? Responding to this question, the following dissertation constructs a messianic political theology of the resurrected dead through an extended case study of the School of the Americas Watch. Currently one of the longest running nonviolent movements for social change in the United States, this movement has called for the closure of the SOA/WHINSEC, a training facility for Latin American military and police officers, and a fundamental change in US foreign policy. The movement has been centered on an annual protest liturgy that names those killed by graduates of the SOA/WHINSEC and claims them as ¡presente!

This dissertation explores the political, moral and theological significance of this claim, a claim that draws upon a creedal affirmation of a belief in and hope for the resurrection. Through the course of this study I construct a political theology that coordinates the dynamics of messianism, liturgy and practical reason. I argue that the performance of the messianic claim in the ¡presente! litany generates obligations between the living and the dead. These obligations underdetermine the actions that follow, however, and therefore require practical reasoning as activists discern how to faithfully enact effective political action. Thus, the need for practical reason remains, even as the development of that practical reason is fundamentally conditioned by the messianism of the liturgy.

Each chapter examines a different dilemma that SOA Watch activists face and examines how the coordination of these three dynamics impacts that dilemma. These include the use of liturgy as a repertoire of contentious politics (chapter 2); the building of nonviolent coalitions across differences of race, religion, class and citizenship (chapter 3); the transgression, affirmation, and appropriation of the law (chapter 4); and the function of exemplarity and charisma to motivate movement involvement (chapter 5). While each of these chapters draw upon empirical materials, my goal is ultimately constructive and I conclude by gesturing toward the possibilities enabled by a messianic political theology rooted in the resurrected presence of the dead. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

To Conceal or Reveal? Predictors of Adolescent Self-Disclosure to Mothers and the Mediating Role of Trust

Katy-marie lance.

Studies have consistently revealed adolescent disclosure as the strongest predictor of parental knowledge about adolescents’ companions, whereabouts, and behaviors. In turn, parental knowledge is linked to various positive adolescent outcomes. It therefore becomes important to understand what promotes adolescent disclosure to parents. Although intrapersonal predictors such as dispositional self-concealment have been identified as important predictors of disclosure in adult dyads, little is known about how personality dimensions affect youth disclosure to parents. The current study tested two main hypotheses: 1) that adolescent self-concealment would account for variation in self-disclosure to mothers, over and above the contribution of previously examined predictors of youth disclosure (i.e., maternal warmth and adolescent rule-breaking behavior) and 2) that parental trust would serve as an influencing variable between our independent variables (i.e., adolescent self-concealment, maternal warmth, and adolescent rule-breaking behavior) and adolescent self-disclosure. Each hypothesis was tested using adolescent and mother reports respectively.

Using a sample of 82 mother-adolescent dyads, two 2-step hierarchical regressions confirmed the first hypothesis. Self-concealment explained additional variance in adolescent self-disclosure above and beyond what had been accounted for by the variables entered at step 1 (maternal warmth and adolescent rule-breaking behavior) according to adolescent reports and also mother reports.

For our second hypothesis, structural equation modeling was used to test a model in which parental trust mediated the relationship between the aforementioned independent variables and adolescent self-disclosure. Neither final model (for adolescent or mother reports) revealed an indirect pathway between self-concealment and self-disclosure. For adolescent reports, the best-fitting approach to the model fit the data adequately, but only when direct paths were also included. For mother reports, the model fit the data relatively well with significant indirect links between maternal warmth, adolescent rule-breaking and adolescent self-disclosure (all mediated by maternal trust), and a direct significant relation between adolescent self-concealment and adolescent self-disclosure. Other models resulted in weaker fit, but informed our understanding of the potential role of trust as an influencing variable in adolescent self-disclosure and are thus discussed in further detail. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

“Feel the Grass Grow”: The Practices and Politics of Slow Peace in Colombia

Angela lederach.

This ethnographic study traces the historical and political processes that shape how grassroots actors build peace in Montes de María, Colombia. Drawing on twenty-two months of ethnographic research, 103 interviews, and twelve focus group sessions with grassroots peace activists, youth, (I)NGO workers, state bureaucrats, private sector actors, and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), I analyze peacebuilding as a site of contestation where universalized notions of ‘peace’ are negotiated, reworked, and recast within a particular locale. In particular, I outline how grassroots leaders explicitly contest and refuse “the times ( los tiempos )” of the state and the international community as implementation of the Colombian peace accords unfolds in Montes de María.

I draw on the distinct social, environmental, and temporal dimensions of everyday peacebuilding in Montes de María to develop a grounded theory of “slow peace.” I argue that social leaders theorize “the times” beyond speed, pace, and duration. Instead, they invoke “the times” to draw attention to radical, alternative ways of experiencing, relating to, and inhabiting the world. The defense of territory and life is found through an immersion into the cotidianidad (everyday), where ancestral memories of collective resistance, practices of care for the entorno (life world), and relations of love and solidaridad (solidarity) are held and nurtured. I offer an anthropological account of peacebuilding that understands peace as a historical, cultural, and political process – emergent, dynamic, plural, and unfolding in everyday life.

Campesinos in Montes de María understand peace as embedded within their daily practices of care for their land and territory through multispecies relations that allow abundant life to flourish even in the midst of the ongoing violence(s) of armed conflict, forced displacement, and extractivism. The practices of slow peace emerge from the tenacious and collective struggle for dignified life found through an immersion into the cotidianidad (everyday) where relationships are deepened, ancestral memories reclaimed, and ecologies regenerated. Slow peace recasts peacebuilding as a multigenerational, multispecies, and continuous struggle to build a decolonial peace otherwise. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Communities of War and Peace: Arendt, Political Association, and International Relations

Shinkyu "james" lee.

Which forms of political association promote peace? Peace is usually connected with cosmopolitan unity or the oneness of humanity. My exploration of the relative benefits of a society of states and the pluralistic orders it creates for peace challenges this view.

In this dissertation, I examine Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on political association. Extensive engagements with three different institutional models characterize Arendt’s work: the nation-state (in The Origins of Totalitarianism ), the ancient polis (in The Human Condition ), and the modern republic (in On Revolution ). My study traces the main features of these models and shows how Arendt’s interest in and understanding of constitutional law and participatory politics lead her to reject both abstract legalism and all-too-concrete nationalism. In my view, Arendt’s writings evince an acute awareness of how difficult it is to balance the domestic need for robust political participation, public spirit, and care for a particular political “world” with the need, at the inter-state level, to create and maintain a framework of international law. I argue that Arendt’s political theory does not founder on this tension. Arendt underlines the need to maintain a tense equilibrium between these two poles, which is required if we are to avoid the cosmopolitan privileging of international law and institutions above all else. Similarly, such a tense and consciously maintained equilibrium enables us to avoid the nationalist conclusion that, in order to be self-governing, a state must possess more or less unfettered sovereignty.

In order to back up these assertions, I investigate Arendt’s novel idea of federalism and her notion of how a constitutional regime can be “augmented and preserved.” Arendt’s concepts of constitutional augmentation and federalism allow us to bridge the gap between domestic and international politics. Indeed, her thought suggests the possibility of re-conceiving of states in a way that does justice to both intra-state and inter-state relations. The potential result is something neither idealistic cosmopolitan theory nor conventional realist theory can offer: a nuanced and well-articulated model of a pluralistic society of states. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Coercive Force, Symbolic Power and Fragmented Urban Publics: Understanding Democratic Police Reform in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Leslie maccolman.

This dissertation asks how democratic police reform shapes police legitimacy. It does so by examining three interconnected waves of police reform that occurred in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina between 2010 and 2018. The first wave (2010-2016) was led by the National Security Ministry and involved an increase in political oversight of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA). The PFA had been the main police force in Buenos Aires for more than a century and, at the time reforms were initiated, was widely denounced as violent, corrupt, and inefficient. The second wave of reform (2010-2016) was led by the Buenos Aires City Government and involved the creation of a new, more modern force with a mandate for community policing: the Metropolitan Police. The PFA and the Metropolitan Police operated in parallel in Buenos Aires until they were merged, in 2017. The third wave of reform (2017-2019) was also led by the City Government and involved the launch of the City Police, comprised of 20,000 ex-PFA officers and 6,000 ex-Metropolitan officers. The launch of the City Police involved dramatic organizational changes, designed to accommodate the disparate internal structures of the PFA and the Metropolitan Police, and other measures aimed at modifying police practices to improve efficiency, criminal deterrence, and, ultimately, police legitimacy.

These three waves of police reform were democratic in terms of both means and ends. Each reform was led by elected political authorities and was guided by citizens’ most pressing security grievances. At the same time, reforms aimed to consolidate ‘democratic policing’ by improving the “operational efficiency and effectiveness” of the police while simultaneously strengthening their “democratic ethos and accountability” (Bailey and Dammert 2006, p. 2). Incrementally and cumulatively, these reforms significantly reduced some of the most egregious historical patterns of police misconduct and contributed to the professionalization of police activity in Buenos Aires. Despite this, the legitimacy of the City Police remains highly contested. What explains this outcome? And what does the analysis of democratic police reform in Buenos Aires reveal about similar processes in other metropolises of the Global South marked by memories of state-sponsored violence and high levels of socio-spatial inequality?

Empirically, I draw on over 100 interviews with differently-positioned actors with intimate knowledge of reforms, including police, public officials, activists, and academic experts. I also draw on data collected through direct observation of dozens of police trainings and local security forums. Theoretically, I conceptualize democratic police reform as a radical field upheaval that upsets established power dynamics and catalyzes new material and symbolic struggles which play out at within the “field of fields” of state power (Arnholtz & Hammerslev, 2013). I argue that, in large capital cities like Buenos Aires, democratic police reforms prompt material and symbolic struggles within the field of policing and in the space of overlap between the field of policing, the field of politics, the juridical field, and the field of organized crime. Through the detailed analysis of each wave of reform, I show how these fields were reconfigured through public deliberations and the “gray zone of politics” (Auyero, 2007) that connects police to politicians, judicial operators, and organized criminal groups through selective application of the law. I show how attention to field configurations can help explain not only the characteristics of reforms but also their effects on police practices, particularly violence and corruption.

In parallel, I trace how these three waves of police reform were experienced and collectively interpreted by what I refer to as “fragmented urban publics.” I argue that in contexts of extreme socio-spatial inequality, like Buenos Aires, differently-situated actors have fundamentally distinct understandings of what is wrong with the police and, hence, what needs to be reformed. Moreover, they may disagree on the ‘right role’ of the police in regulating urban conflict. By prompting debate on these questions, democratic police reforms can reproduce or exacerbate pre-existing social divisions that cluster around class or political-ideological orientation. I conceptualize police legitimacy as a contingent, relational, and multi-dimensional social construct (Bottoms & Tankebe, 2012; Tankebe, 2013), which varies based on peoples’ habitual interactions with the police and their ideologically-mediated understanding of the ‘right’ role of the police. In light of this conceptualization, I argue that democratic police reforms can simultaneously strengthen police legitimacy among certain publics, while undermining it for others.

Beware the Magic Crocodile: The Role of Chiefs in Cultural and Political Reform in Malawi

Emily maiden.

The study of chiefs as legitimate political players is a growing field in political science. Recently, scholars have looked at vote brokerage and the provision of resources, but few talk about the power of chiefs as agents of cultural change. Using Malawi as a case study, this project uses 121 interviews with chiefs, with supporting evidence drawn from approximately 50 additional interviews from key stakeholders (including teachers, child protection workers, government bureaucrats, and NGOs), and 23 focus groups with over 200 women, to explore how and why chiefs are promoting political and a cultural reform to combat child marriage.

I find that the dual positionality of chiefs as both political and cultural actors, invested with high levels of trust and support from their communities, contributes to their ability to address culturally embedded practices like child marriage, which actively promote violence against children. Chiefs are joining with government and NGO actors to promote political reform in that they are working to educate their constituents on recent changes to the national marriage laws; in many cases, they are also using their authority as chiefs to pass bylaws that incorporate harsher punishments for those found breaking the law. But chiefs are—paradoxically, many argue—taking their advocacy a step further by using their authority as the “custodians of culture” to address and reform the underlying cultural norms and practices that make child marriage acceptable. To this end, chiefs emerge as curious political actors that have the power to do what many political reforms fail to do: change the underlying culture. Chiefs should therefore be central to the efforts of NGOs, governments, and human rights activists interested in, not only passing legal reforms to reduce forms of violence, but addressing underlying culture practices that create a space through which this violence emerges. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Environmental Violence in the Earth System and the Human Niche

Richard (drew) marcantonio.

The focus of this dissertation is human-produced hazardous pollution that harms human health, which I call environmental violence (EV). I define EV as direct and indirect harm experienced by humans due to toxic and non-toxic pollutants put into a local—and concurrently the global—ecosystem through human activities and processes. I develop this novel concept of EV as both an analytical tool, namely a framework that can be applied across broad contexts and by socioenvironmental researchers, practitioners, and managers alike, and as a thing-in-itself, something that can be seen, felt, taken into the human body to deleterious effect, and that can be measured. Pollution production is a fact of the human story but much more is being produced than is needed to maximize the capacity for human flourishing such that literally millions of people are directly harmed and many more indirectly. Today, EV is pervasive in the Earth system and the human niche and is the single largest human-produced source of mortality, causing more than 8 million deaths annually.

In this dissertation, I draw attention to three critical underlying realities regarding EV by utilizing a combination of primary empirical social and environmental data, as well as additional data and literature from the fields of peace studies, public health, Earth science, and anthropology. The first critical reality is inequality: specifically, different populations unequally produce or contribute to EV; the risk and vulnerability associated with EV are unequally distributed; and, correspondingly, the harm and power differentials experienced are unequal. The second critical reality underlying EV, paradoxically, is that despite the inequalities associated with EV, ultimately all people are affected by it and stand to face severe risk to their niche as the destabilization of the Earth System continues. In the near-term, EV is a hazard for some people more than others, but ultimately it threatens everyone—the entire human niche and the Earth System. The third and final critical reality underlying EV is that human-produced pollution begets a process of violence and is itself violent. While these issues are substantial, I demonstrate how the EV framework can be applied to elucidate key junctures of them that, if actioned ethically and equitably, can lead to substantial reductions in EV and result in a more sustainable future for the Earth system and the human niche.

The Political Economy of Insecurity: Livelihoods, Mobilities, and Social Networks of Women Traders on the Congo-Rwanda Border

Maryam rokhideh.

Insecurity is experienced as a constant of daily life in the Great Lakes region of Africa, especially in the borderland area between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Congolese and Rwandan women face many risks through a complex intermeshing of economic hardship, crime, and gendered violence, while at the same time maneuvering and resisting structures of power. In a region disrupted by decades of conflict and the subsequent decline of economic opportunities, cross-border trade conducted by women is instrumental in securing the lives and livelihoods of women and their families. Using multi-sited, mixed methods research on the Congo-Rwanda border, I examine the daily strategies, mobility patterns, and social networks of women cross-border traders. My research finds that through this trade, women have become primary earners and taken up new responsibilities previously reserved for men, shifting culturally salient gender roles.

The importance of cross-border trade in supporting job creation, food security, and women’s empowerment is widely recognized by scholars and policymakers alike. However, studies on cross-border trade have neglected a critical area of contribution by women traders. Women’s cross-border trade facilitates the supply and delivery of goods and services across Sub-Saharan Africa. Importantly, women traders have cultivated important social safety nets in the absence of social protection mechanisms and institutional support systems. Emerging crises like the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of strengthening social safety nets that safeguard inclusive access to basic goods and services, especially in areas underserved by government systems. Through a mobile ethnography, my dissertation demonstrates how women traders have been at the forefront of food and service provision providing for the needs and welfare of their families and communities and developed important social safety nets to prevent and mitigate risks. This dissertation highlights the essential role women play in service provision, risk-mitigation, and socioeconomic development in situations affected by conflict and insecurity. Drawing on the political economy of everyday life in insecurity, I contribute to a new direction in anthropological research—one that gives critical import to issues of power, inequality, and violence by critically analyzing the social and economic processes of everyday praxis in the midst of social change.

Violentology: Expert Knowledge and Government Peacebuilding in Colombia 1958-1990

Ana sanchez ramirez.

This dissertation studies the intellectual and political history of peace in Colombia from 1958 to 1990. To do so, I investigate how Colombian academics participated in their government’s responses to violence amid the ebbs and flows of political armed conflicts since the mid-20 th century. Throughout this period, the Colombian government tested various formulas to end violence which ranged from military pacification to peace negotiations, and from development programs to democratic reforms. Academics labored in parallel researching violence and engaging in intellectual exchanges with government officials over the ideal pathways to peace. In the process, these scholars both developed the academic field of violence studies and attempted to influence some of the most significant government peacebuilding efforts in the country. By 1990, the government-academia partnership for peace yielded a consensus around an approach I call “peace as democracy,” that would have its heyday in the 1991 National Constitutional Assembly. Although contemporary Peace Studies scholarship upholds peace and democracy as naturally aligned goals, the history of violence studies in Colombia demonstrates the large degree of contingency that yielded this result amid the continent’s longest armed conflict.

Drawing from previously understudied official and academic archives as well as oral history interviews, I follow two distinct, yet interrelated, intellectual generations of violence studies scholars. The first generation initiated the field in the late 1950s by studying the bipartisan armed conflict of the previous decades, known as la Violencia . Since the early 1970s, a new cohort of scholars embarked on a revisionist project of la Violencia period as they also turned their gaze to contemporary violence. By the 1980s, guerrilla insurgencies, counter-insurgent paramilitary groups, and a buoyant drug economy sustained high levels of violence in the country. Scholars from the new generation rose to national prominence through their participation in the 1987 Commission on the Study of Violence created by the Virgilio Barco administration (1986-1990). The press assigned the moniker “violentologists” to the group, and “violentology” soon came to denote a set of innovative ideas about violence and peace in late 20 th century Colombia. While this generation actively invested in the “peace as democracy” approach, they did so from an expansive understanding of democracy that the national government chose to circumvent. By interrogating the historical mismatch between intellectuals’ robust visions of peace and the government’s peacebuilding action, this research offers new insights on the role of expert knowledge in national peace efforts.

Violentology: expert knowledge and government peacebuilding in late 20th century Colombia

Ana sanchez-ramirez, unsettling the settler colonial imagination: decoloniality as a theological hermeneutic in south africa, steven savides.

This dissertation examines the extent to which decoloniality can be employed as a theological hermeneutic to foster Christian unity and reconciliation. It investigates whether decoloniality can disrupt the settler colonial imaginary that developed from Eurocentrism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and exploitative capitalist practices. Anchored in Reformed theology, this study draws on the theory of coloniality/decoloniality, settler colonial studies, the study of religion, and the theological concentrations of ecclesiology and missiology. It poses three questions: 1.) How is theology implicated in the formation of the settler colonial imaginary in South Africa? 2.) To what extent can decoloniality be applied as a hermeneutic in the Reformed tradition to render white Christians ethically and morally vulnerable to the unifying power of the cross? 3.) Can the decolonial telos of pluriversality be applied theologically to facilitate the church’s transformation from functional coexistence to the splendor of a new Ephesian moment?

Chapter 1 responds to the call of the fallist movements for decolonization. It confronts the personal, prophetic, and pathological dimensions of post-apartheid society and the consequences of coloniality. Chapter 2 investigates power relations within the settler colonial imaginary and the role Christian evangelism played in its formation. Chapter 3 establishes decoloniality as an essential hermeneutic for understanding the contemporary South African situation. It focuses on Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s contribution to decolonial discourses. Chapter 4 examines the theological application of decoloniality to South Africa’s pressing social challenges in light of the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and apartheid. The thought of theologians Vuyani Vellem and Gerrie Snyman is explored as it relates to the message of the cross and vulnerability. The dissertation turns in Chapter 5 to the pluriversal telos of decoloniality and the promise it holds for church unification.

In light of Christ’s prayer “that they may all be one” and the vision for convivial unity across difference in Ephesians, where the metaphors of temple and body are central, decoloniality is found to be an essential hermeneutic for nurturing a new Ephesian moment. However, it is not sufficient. Authentic vulnerability on the part of the white community is necessary to unsettle the settler colonial imaginary.

Motherhood and Intimate Partner Violence in the Context of Social-Ecological Resilience

Kathryn scrafford.

Motherhood provides a key source of resilience for IPV-exposed mothers, yet most psychological research focuses on parenting deficits among IPV-exposed women. Two studies were conducted to develop the claims that Ungar’s (2012) model of social-ecological resilience provides a useful framework for understanding IPV-exposed women’s experiences of motherhood and calls upon actors in women’s social environments to support IPV-exposed mother’s resilience. Methods: Thematic analysis was used to examine parenting strengths and fears of IPV-exposed women from focus groups with IPV-exposed mothers (n=22) and service providers (n=31). Multilevel linear modeling was used to analyze the moderating influences of neighborhood factors on IPV’s effect on mother-child relationship quality in a longitudinal study of parents and adolescents (n=1,090). Results: Thematic analysis indicated that mothers emphasized their parenting strengths and the toll of abuse, while service providers emphasized parenting deficits. Both stated that mothers left partners for their children’s sakes and expressed concerns about intergenerational transmission of IPV. MLM revealed a within-person effect such that mothers reporting more IPV also reported improvement in mother-child relationship quality over time. A between-person moderating effect of neighborhood chaos indicated that IPV- exposed mothers reported worse relationship quality than non-exposed mothers when neighborhood chaos was low but no difference in relationship quality when neighborhood chaos was high. Discussion: Findings mapped robustly onto the social-ecological model of resilience. Nussbaum’s (1997) Capabilities Approach and Lederach’s (2003) Big Picture of Conflict Transformation are discussed as frameworks for translating resilience into social change, with recommendations for ways psychologists can support IPV-exposed mothers’ resilience.

Investigating Early Life Experience on Sociomoral Development: The Mediating Role of Child Physiological Regulation

Mary tarsha, does violence beget violence factors moderating trajectories of youth aggression in a context of political conflict, laura taylor.

A common assumption is that a violent environment produces violent youth; this project interrogated this assertion in two ways examining if exposure to intergroup antisocial behavior increases youth aggression, and in turn, if changes in general youth aggression are related to participation in intergroup conflict. Improving on past work, the current study utilized four waves of a prospective, longitudinal dataset of mother/child dyads (N=820; 51% female; ages 10 to 20 years old) in Northern Ireland. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) addressed new questions about inter-individual differences in intra-individual change in a setting of protracted political conflict. Although boys were higher than girls in initial aggression, there were no significant gender differences in the average trajectory or linear change in aggression from 10 to 20 years old. As a risk factor, experience with sectarian antisocial behavior predicted greater aggression problems; however, that effect weakened with age and was buffered by a cohesive family environment. Regarding the continuation of intergroup conflict, being female and having a more cohesive family negatively predicted youth participation in sectarian acts, whereas the trajectory of general aggression (i.e., intercepts and linear slopes) predicted significantly more youth engagement in out-group antisocial behavior. On an individual level, the findings identify ways the family environment serves to protect youth from greater aggression and from engaging in out-group hostility; at a societal level, the project suggests multiple ways to decrease the potential for youth mobilization in protracted conflict. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Coming of Age in Post-Accord Belfast: Changes in the Political Climate and Exposure to Sectarian Violence as Moderators of Adolescents' Emotional Security

Dana townsend.

Growing up in a post-accord society characterized by ongoing intergroup tension and cyclical violence such as Northern Ireland may put youth at a higher risk for psychopathology. Prior research in Belfast showed that increased exposure to sectarian violence often resulted in more emotional insecurity about the community and subsequent adjustment problems. Though the impact of direct exposure to violence is well documented, few studies account for factors outside of one’s immediate environment – such as the broader sociopolitical climate and the levels of tension or threat in society. The current study advances research in this area by using systematically coded newspapers from Northern Ireland (N = 2,797) to assess the overarching trends in Catholic-Protestant relations from 2006-2011 and explore the relation between these macro-contextual changes and adolescents’ emotional insecurity. A qualitative analysis of the news reports showed that, despite progress in the peace process during these years, intergroup conflict was prevalent. At the societal level, political tension and intragroup threat were characterized by sectarian community violence, lack of trust in the police, and a spike in dissident republican attacks. A series of multilevel moderation analyses using the coded news reports and five waves of survey data from families in Belfast (N = 999) indicated that adolescents responded differently to community violence depending on the political climate. Overall, emotional insecurity increased with exposure to sectarian violence. During periods of high intragroup threat in society, this relation was stronger for Protestants and weaker for Catholics. As macro-level threat increased, Catholics who had more cumulative exposure to violence became more secure , Catholics who had less cumulative exposure became more insecure , and Protestants who had more cumulative exposure remained more insecure than their peers. During periods of high intergroup tension in society, adolescents with more cumulative exposure to violence became more secure, regardless of their group. These findings illustrate how individual responses to the immediate environment can vary based on salient events in society, thus contributing both empirically and methodologically to the design of interventions and policies in Belfast and other areas affected by violent conflict. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Concluding Conquest: Why States End Military Occupation

Lenore vanderzee.

Military occupation has been part of interstate relations the system existed. Conquest paid, and controlling territory meant reaping its benefits. However, after World War II norms of state sovereignty and territorial integrity were codified in the United Nations Charter. At the same time, maintaining colonization became untenable and politically harmful, and Western states began to relinquish their colonies overseas, either by force or choice. Despite these emerging norms and the process of decolonization, military occupation continues to be an important international issue. There have been forty-two occupations that have begun since the end of World War II; of these, thirteen remain ongoing, and twenty-nine have ended. This project asks: Why do some of these occupations endure, while others end? Specifically, Why and how do states end military occupation? I theorize that the interaction between conditions at the international, dyadic, and domestic levels of analysis significantly shift the cost-benefit analysis of occupying states.

There has been very little comparative work on the processes of military occupation – the studies are limited to a handful of books and articles that do not directly address the question at hand, or have a coherent and logical definition of military occupation from which to build. To fill this gap, I created an original dataset identifying forty-two military occupations, 1945-2014 and collecting data on 32 variables. Using this data, I build my theory and develop hypotheses using diverse literatures, including territorial disputes, inter- and intrastate wars, failing states and falling empires, the demise of colonialism, and case studies of the individual cases of military occupation. By examining these varying branches of literature, I rule out potential competing explanations, as well as make some cautious generalizations about the nature of the end and outcome of military occupation.

I then test my theory by analyzing two cases of military occupation that share several important similarities: Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor (1975-1999) and Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara (1975-Present). Through comparative process-tracing, I ascertain how conditions at the three levels of analysis interact to result in these divergent outcomes. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Cosmopolitan Priming for Change: Transnational Social Movements in Communist Eastern Europe

Ana velitchkova.

Social movement scholars have argued that social movement mobilization at the micro level is a sequential multi-stage process but have ignored the first stage of this process, the creation of a pool of supporters from which movements can potentially draw participants, when analyzing the Eastern European protest wave of 1989. I question the assumption that such a pool of potential participants was ready-made and ask how it was formed. To address these concerns, I analyze the mobilization context in which the successful protest wave of 1989 developed. I contrast it with the mobilization contexts of the unsuccessful Chinese and Albanian cases. My concrete research question is: What were the societal institutional environment and the political culture in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s within which protest movements could gather mass support and within which democracy could take root? I argue that the Eastern European democratic impetus was grounded within a cosmopolitan world culture. I also argue that Eastern European transnational social movements were major cosmopolitan actors in creating and promoting this culture over more than a decade. Thus, cosmopolitanism served as a mobilization potential while the development of cosmopolitanism appears to have been the first stage of the protest mobilization process and subsequent democratization in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. My evidence comes from various sources, including a dataset on transnational social movement organizations around the world from 1953 to 2003, the World Value Survey, data on movement membership and reach, and semi-structured interviews with members of the most prominent movement in the region, the Esperanto movement, in four Eastern European countries. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Interpreting Islam: U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1953-1968

This study of United States relations with post-colonial Indonesia sheds light on how prevalent assumptions about and interpretations of a major world religion, Islam, shaped policymakers’ attitudes and decisions concerning U.S. engagement with Muslim actors abroad. It examines not only the accuracy and nuance of U.S. officials’ knowledge about Islam in Indonesia, but also religion’s shifting salience in U.S. foreign relations during the height of the Cold War. It argues that religion mattered in the construction and implementation of U.S. policies toward Indonesia—but under specific, changing conditions, not as an overarching framework. Islam provided one lens by which U.S. officials understood the behavior and goals of the Indonesian government and, perhaps more consequentially, the character of the majority of Indonesia’s people. While interpretations of Islam in Indonesia evolved over the course of subsequent U.S. administrations—and the significance and utility of these perceptions waxed and waned over time—in general the U.S. foreign policy establishment tended to see religion as a means to an end, namely, as an instrument that at times proved useful in the struggle against global communism. Read the full dissertation on CurateND »

Building Peace in the Anthropocene: The Practical Wisdom of Hospitality amidst Climate Violence

Michael yankoski.

This dissertation is built on the premise that anthropogenic climate change is more likely than not to result in 2C+ of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100. In such a scenario, anthropogenic climate change will variously impact virtually all aspects of human social, political, and economic processes during the remainder of the 21st century. Given this premise, this dissertation explores this question: “In the context of 2C+ of anthropogenic climate change, and with the high likelihood of unprecedented human population displacement because of this warming, what are some of the resources that might help empower the construction of systems of peace instead of systems of bloodshed, scapegoating, and violence?”

In response to this question I argue that the tradition and practice of intentional hospitality toward the vulnerable other found within the larger Christian tradition is a practice that contains rich resources which may help empower communities that seek to welcome the vulnerable other in the context of anthropogenic climate change. In addition to a survey of some of the historical and theological foundations for such a practice, I also offer a theological (micro) ethnography of hospitality within three case studies located in Vancouver, BC, among a community and network of people who have been engaging the practice of hospitality toward vulnerable others for approximately three decades.

Ultimately I argue that while the practice of intentional hospitality toward vulnerable others in the context of anthropogenic climate change is unlikely to be sufficient—that is to say, the needs are likely to far exceed the capacities of different communities to sustain the offer of hospitality—the practice of hospitality toward the vulnerable other is a vital practice that is worth engaging in pursuit of peace amidst the Anthropocene. For all who find a way through the challenges that are likely to come, welcome and hospitality and care—in different forms and in distinct manifestations within particular places and particular communities at particular times—will be pivotal in making a way possible.

Caroline Hughes Director of Doctoral Studies

Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine Assistant Director for Doctoral Studies

[email protected]

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phd proposal in peace and conflict resolution

Related Papers

douglas katho

Oscar Mateos

Since the independence processes in the African continent, armed conflicts, peace and security have raised concern and attention both at the domestic level and at the international scale. In recent years, all aspects have undergone significant changes which have given rise to intense debate. The end of some historical conflicts has taken place in a context of slight decrease in the number of armed conflicts and the consolidation of post-conflict reconstruction processes. Moreover, African regional organizations have staged an increasingly more active internal shift in matters related to peace and security, encouraged by the idea of promoting “African solutions to African problems”. This new scenario, has been accompanied by new uncertainties at the security level and major challenges at the operational level, especially for the African Union. This article aims to ascertain the state of affairs on all these issues and raise some key questions to consider.

Nelson Obah-akpowoghaha

The state of peace and conflict in the African continent since independence remains a preoccupying phenomenon, with development and continuing challenges both at the domestic level and international scale. Indeed, beside the steady progress in the establishment of the African Union continental peace and security design and the promising achievements, the geopolitical map of Africa continue to bear the marks of several latent crises. There are also multiple full-blown conflicts in the face of which peace efforts are often met with opposition or simply foiled by the existence of diverse challenges at the operational level, especially for the African Union. This paper aims to ascertain the state of affairs on all issues as regard armed conflict on selected countries of Africa.

Conflict Studies Quarterly

Taiwo Taiwo

SSRN Electronic Journal

Rafael GRASA , Oscar Mateos

Tolulope D I M E J I Okunola

Africa Today

James Scarritt

Is Violence Inevitable in Africa? Theories of Conflict and Approaches to Conflict Prevention

This volume is an attempt to analyse the causes of conflict in Africa, to review the various approaches to conflict prevention or conflict resolution and to discuss some of the practical difficulties in ending violence. It brings together a wide range of scholars and practitioners, with specialist knowledge of a large number of African countries. The study of conflict and conflict resolution has, over the years, resulted in the publication of a large volume of material, extending from NGO reports to theories of war. As a result, books on the subject often lack a clear focus. For this reason, the editors have been careful to ask the contributors to address the question in a way that would ensure not just that the chapters were complementary but that the book as a whole should be coherent. The intention here is to provide, within a single volume, a survey of the various approaches to conflict in Africa, a systematic discussion of some of the root causes of violence, as well as case studies on the consequences of violence and the effects of conflict resolution. The book is in four parts. The Introduction develops a political analysis of violence in Africa. Part I discusses a variety of theories of conflict and outlines the main approaches to conflict resolution. Part II presents case studies of conflict management and resolution. The Conclusion reviews the literature and offers an original way forward.

… , Human Security, Governance and Development in the …

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Theses/dissertations from 2022 2022.

The Rise of Neo-Fascist Populism and Islamophobia in the West , Mohamed Tawfiq Said Tabib

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Competing Narratives: the Struggle for the Soul of Egypt , Ahmed El Mansouri

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The Rise of Mono-Ethnic Religious Nationalism in Myanmar and Its Impacts on the Security Situation of the South Asian Region , S M Anisuz Zaman

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Explaining the Sectarian Violence in the Middle East: a Conflict Analysis of the Case Study of Saudi Arabia and Iran , Ahmed Elsayed Eltally

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

The Impact of the Refugee Crisis on the European Union , Andreea Elena Galan

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

What is the Nature of the Conflict Experienced by Japanese Workers in International Companies Based in Japan and What Type of Conflict Management Do They Access? , Tomoko Shinohara Le

The Function of Religion in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict , Stephanie Claire Mitchell

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National Security, Mass Surveillance, and Citizen Rights under Conditions of Protracted Warfare , Krystal Lynn Conniry

Intrastate Armed Conflict and Peacebuilding in Nepal: An Assessment of the Political and Economic Agency of Women , Gyanu Gautam Luintel

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Nationalism in United States Foreign Policy in the Post 9/11 Era , Chris W. Baum

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The Impact of Economic Integration within the European Union as a Factor in Conflict Transformation and Peace-Building , John Umo Ette

Dialogue in Identity-Based Conflict (Study of Intergroup-Dialogue with University Students) , Lisha Shrestha

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Music and Conflict Resolution: Can a Music and Story Centered Workshop Enhance Empathy? , Parfait Adegboyé Bassalé

Postwar Reconstruction in Liberia: The Participation and Recognition of Women in Politics in Liberia , Roland Tuwea Clarke

Why Occupy?: Principal Reasons for Participant Involvement in Occupy Portland , Danielle Filecia

Here, We Are Walking on a Clothesline: Statelessness and Human (In)Security Among Burmese Women Political Exiles Living in Thailand , Elizabeth Hooker

Cultural Behavior in Post-Urbanized Brazil: The Cordial Man and Intrafamilial Conflict , Thais La Rosa

Track I Diplomacy and Civil Society in Cyprus: Reconciliation and Peacebuilding During Negotiations , Elicia Keren Reed

Conflict Resolution in Islam: Document Review of the Early Sources , Flamur Vehapi

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Perceptions and Voices of South Sudanese About the North-South Sudan Conflict , Machar Wek Aleu-Baak

The Challenges and Opportunities of Immigrant Integration: A Study of Turkish Immigrants in Germany , Matthew Franklin Clark

Perceptions of Peacebuilding and Multi-Track Collaboration in Divided Societies for a Sustainable Peace Agreement at the Political Level: A Case Study of Cyprus , Brooke Patricia Galloway

Conflict-Conditioned Communication: A Case Study of Communicative Relations between the United States and Iran from 2005-2008 , Erin Leigh McKee

The Cultural Barriers to Integration of Second Generation Muslims in Northern Italy , Joseph Anthony Migliore

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Poverty and Conflict: A Self-Perpetuating Cycle in the Somali Regional State (Region 5), Ethiopia: 1960-2010 , Bisrat Teshome

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Between Non-intervention and Protection: A study on the case of Darfur and the Responsibility to Protect , David Ryan Lucas

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'Conflict Analysis:' Exploring the Role of Kuwait in Mediation in the Middle East , Abdullah R. Al Saleh

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Sample proposals

MSCU Peace Advancement Challenge proposal summaries, 2013

Winner 2013: Emma Stainton

Public transportation is a means of transportation that has the potential to advance peace. It protects the environment as it requires fewer resources than an individual in a private vehicle. It promotes an opportunity for interaction with one’s community and requires cooperation on the part of all riders to ensure a smooth and safe travel to several destinations. However, the interior of busses are often littered with negative advertisements about drug use, debt issues and disease, this barrage of signs and images leave the rider feeling distressed. This feeling of distress may prompt the rider disengage with the community of people around them and withdraw into themselves.

Runner-up: Nadine Hiemstra

Western society places a strong emphasis on the economic value of human existence, applauding hard working, productive individuals and applying the label of “burden” to those who are less able to contribute to the economic system. As a result, people living with disabilities and mental illness are often devalued and marginalized. However, such individuals often are exemplary models of other, intangible aspects of human characteristics such as compassion, generosity, sincerity, and courage. This proposal suggests a peacemaking initiative that would provide support and opportunity for individuals with disabilities and mental illness to share their experiences, passions and opinions in an official workshop forum with others without the challenge of disability or mental illness. This process would reverse the power roles and place the marginalized in a position of authority and instruction while the “abled” learn humility and the deeper value of humanity by taking on the role of the learner.

Other entries:

The relationship between religion and evolutionary biology is a divisive one that is inhibiting both scientific and spiritual progress. It is important to break down barriers of fear by encouraging people of faith to explore the intricacies of creation, and be open to understanding new scientific theories. This proposal seeks to provide a platform where discussion between these two groups can take place. The ultimate goal is that religious and scientific schools of thought need no longer be ‘on the verge of an ideological battle’. The Waterloo-based online forum will provide a space for these two groups to find common ground and also seek to engage more community members in the conversation.

Once you know and understand another person’s perspective you are more likely to be able to engage with him or her peacefully. For communities in Canada, a nation built largely on immigrants, and even around the world, to be able to respond to increasing diversity in a positive and constructive manner we must move beyond tolerance and instead towards mutual respect based on understanding. My idea for practical peacemaking is implementing education about religions and interfaith dialogue into elementary or middle school curriculums. Finding ways that students can engage with one another, rather than following a didactic teaching pedagogy, will empower young people to become peacemakers and change-makers in their own right. Ultimately, this broadening of perspectives, and communities rooted in trust and respect, will help to foster a safer, more peaceful society.

Educational Experience for Acceptance is an educational peace experience project. It will take the form of a miniature world’s fair that can travel from place to place. The project is directed towards youth aged 11 to 15, and can be used in any educational setting; including schools, summer camps, and after-school programs. The project is based on the idea that learning about different cultures can help the audience members grow into people who are accepting of different cultures and who promote peace between cultures.

For the Peace Advancement Challenge I propose we create a monthly paper that will encourage and inspire every generation to continue to work for peace. The paper will emphasize the ability to create change regardless of how big the problems seem. This source of information will highlight different issues that seem too big for the individual and break them down in a way that makes the ultimate goal more realistic. The paper will be accessible and appealing to a vast age range by having elements that attract the young as well as the older population. It will have multiple outlets so it can reach each different demographic easily. The paper will encourage, give ideas, and motivate individuals to act for peace regardless of a bombardment of negativity surrounding them.

5 Fully funded PhDs in peace and conflict studies

(Reposted from: peaceandconflictstudies.org )

Doing a postgraduate study is very exciting. It provides a great opportunity to move closer to the level of expertise in one’s area of interest, and it provides a sense of accomplishment and self-worth for many. This feeling of pride is even further heightened if the postgraduate studies is for a PhD. Expectedly, there is always a great euphoria that accompanies the realization that a research proposal has been accepted by a University and that a PhD journey is about to begin. However, the euphoria can quickly give way to panic when one considers the possible challenge a lack of funding can pose to the pursuit. Most doctoral students either work part time to fund their studies or find a mixture of smaller grants from charities, organizations or industry. This article highlights institutions that offer fully-funded PhD programmes in peace and conflict studies, with the hope that it would encourage students to undertake courses in peace and conflict studies, thereby helping to build a critical mass of peacemakers, peacebuilders and conflict resolution experts.

Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa

Programme Information: The Durban University of Technology’s Peacebuilding Programme is arguably the biggest and most exhaustive of its kind on the continent of Africa. With close to 50 doctoral students enrolled in the programme, it is one of the most diverse on the continent, and one of the most hands-on PhD programmes worldwide. The degrees start with a compulsory on-campus component of one month during which time students attend classes and submit assignments on peace theory, receive training in practical peacebuilding and learn the details of writing a research thesis. Students are encouraged to work on action research topics which directly build peace among individuals and communities.

Programme Requirements:

A Master’s degree with a research component, normally at an upper class level (70%) or above.
Strong written and spoken English
Relevant life experience beyond studying at the university
A commitment to attend the university full-time at the start of the academic programme, and a week at the start of the second year.
A commitment to devote a minimum of 12-15 hours per week to thesis work, on average, following the on-campus period.

Funding Information: DUT offers tuition free studies for doctoral students for the first three years. It also supports cost of data collection and for the preparation of the final version of the thesis for submission.

Link: Professor Geoff Harris and Dr. Sylvia Kaye, [email protected]

University of Notre Dame’s PhD in Peace Studies.

Programme Information: The University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace regularly offers PhD scholarships in the field of Peace Studies for students willing to study in the United States. Graduates are fully credentialed in one of the six disciplines as well as in peace studies. They are prepared for positions in research and teaching — in anthropology, history, political science, psychology, sociology, theology, or peace studies — and for contributions to peacebuilding practice.

Each of the six partner departments (anthropology, history, political science, psychology, sociology, and theology) has specific requirements for earning a dual Ph.D., while the requirements in peace studies are similar for all doctoral students. Doctoral students typically:

Meet course requirements and pass a comprehensive examin one partner department as well as in peace studies.
Take a minimum of 6 required peace studies coursestaught by Kroc Institute faculty as well as departmental courses with significant content relevant to peace studies
Study core peace studiesliterature and research design
Submit a peace studiesarticle to a scholarly journal to be considered for publication
Submit at least one proposalto an external funding agency for doctoral research
Complete a teaching assistantshipin “Introduction to Peace Studies”
Complete one or more research or teaching assistantshipswith Kroc Institute faculty engaged in scholarship related to the Institute’s research themes, and
Conduct dissertationresearch and writing under the guidance of Kroc faculty and fellows

Funding Information: The University provides admitted students with full financial support in the form of fellowships, graduate assistantships, and tuition scholarships, plus stipends for living expenses for five years.

University of Uppsala’s PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies

Programme Information: The Department of Peace and Conflict Research at the University of Uppsala in Sweden offers a PhD programme that lasts for 4 years, including compulsory course work corresponding to about 1 year of fulltime studies. PhD candidates are often involved in teaching or administration up to 20% of their time, so it may take up to 5 years to complete the PhD programme.

The application should be in English, except for writing samples which could be in either Swedish or English. The documents submitted should consist of the following:

A completed application form for doctoral studies
A short personal letter (1‒2 pages)
certified transcripts of academic records
A project plan (3‒5 pages)
Letters of reference/recommendation (max 2 letters) or a list of references (max 2) which can be contacted by the admission committee.
Writing samples (1‒3 samples)

Funding Information: It is important for prospective applicants to note that PhD candidates at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, as with most Swedish universities, become employees of the university, that is, they are not seen as students. A consequence of this is that there are no tuition fees, but normally there are also no scholarships available.

University of Hamburg’s PhD in Peace and Security Studies

Programme Information: The aim of the PhD in Peace and Security Studies at the University of Hamburg is to facilitate both academic and practical career-oriented learning through an integration of young scholars into the activities of the centre’s activities. The programme has a comprehensive programme that includes seminars, research workshops and fieldtrips that help students deepen and broaden their knowledge of theories and methodologies, while gaining insights into current problems in peace research. Doctoral students also have opportunities to present their work-progress to a forum of professional experts during the seminars and workshops regularly organised by the department.

Requirements for the programme include:

An above-average science, social science or humanities degree at master’s level or higher. The IFSH conducts its own selection procedure.
A good knowledge of the fundamentals of peace research,
And a dissertation topic in line with the current research program of the IFSH are expected. Doctoral students at the IFSH participate in working groups and research projects and are assigned personal advisors according the topics of their dissertations. A program director is responsible for the overall management of the program.

Funding Information: The PhD programme is tuition free. The IFSH does not offer funding itself, but suitable candidates are often provided with support in applying for scholarships.

University of Otago’s PhD in Peace Studies

Programme Information: The University of Otago offers a fully funded PhD programme themed: Trusting the Enemy: Understanding Intergroup Trust in Conflict and Peace Studies through Social Psychological Approaches. The programme is built on the core belief that trust is the glue that holds relationships together. This project focuses on furthering our understanding of the multidimensional nature of trust. It aims for researchers and practitioners alike to better understand how conflict persists through distrust, how peace building can be empowered through trust, and how fragile intergroup relations can be strengthened through systematic trust building. This work intends to build on the Intergroup Trust Model, which hypothesizes that trust between groups is shaped by the five dimensions of competence, integrity, compassion, compatibility, and security.

Acceptance as a candidate for the PhD degree depends upon the University being able to provide adequate expert supervision in the intended area of research.

The University considers the following criteria when making an internal assessment:

Academic standard: Prospective students must meet the highest academic standards. A first class Honours degree or Master’s degree including a significant research component is required; research publications (peer-reviewed articles in academic journals or book-chapters) are desirable.
The project proposal must fit well with our research profile and appears manageable and feasible within a three-year time frame and given financial and other constraints.
The project must be likely to generate high-quality, publishable work in peer-reviewed journals.
A Master’s degree with a focus on peace and conflict studies is highly desirable.

In order for us to make internal assessment, the University needs four things from the applicant:

Full academic transcripts highlighting which course is your thesis or dissertation and / or details of research publications.
Where possible, an electronic copy of the piece of independent research submitted for examination.
A curriculum vitae which includes publications, at least one reference letter and the contact details of referees (a minimum of two)
A preliminary research proposal (about 5 pages) which identifies the contribution of the project to the discourse, a description of its theoretical framework, research design, methodology and time plan.

With this information, the University can assess the likelihood of scholarship funding and the ability of the Centre to provide adequate supervision for the project. The candidate may be invited to a Skype interview as part of the selection process. If an applicant is successful in this internal screening process, he / she may then proceed with a formal application.

Funding Information: The PhD programme is fully funded.

( Go to original article )

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Proposal to establish a Los Angeles baccalaureate high school peace education program

How the East Lansing Peace Education Center is creating a better world

Fully Funded Rotary Peace Fellowships: MA or Certificate In Peace And Development Studies

Ikeda Center Education Fellows Program: Call For Proposals

10 thoughts on “5 fully funded phds in peace and conflict studies”.

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mode of studies and the location of the university

Is there age limit for the programme?

Am currently running master degree in peace and conflict management with the university of jos….perhaps, I could know what is the PhD requirement for admission with any of this instition ok.. .

I recently graduated with Masters Degree in Peace and Conflict Studies at Copperbelt University. I am now looking for opportunities for a full scholarship for a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies

Am currently with MSc Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution and need a fully funded PHD in the course, what do I need to do?

I completed my Msc in peace studies and conflict resolution in the year 2019.And I want to start my PhD in the same course. Please help me with a free tuition fee school in Iceland.

I completed my Msc in Peace Studies and conflict resolution in 2019 and I am looking for opportunities to study abroad with free tuition fee. Please, help me.

I am currently running my masters degree in Nigeria open University. Please furnish me information with any good University foreign University that can give me an admission with tuition free.

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Guðni Th. Jóhannesson with Peter Katzenstein, Nov. 10, 2022. Photo: Jason Koski

Peace and Conflict Studies Annual Graduate Student Conference Review

Reppy Graduate Student Conference, SP 24 participants

By Avishai Melamed, 2023-24 Reppy Institute Director’s Fellow

On April 27, the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies hosted its annual Graduate Student Conference .

The academic workshop, which aims to bring together graduate students whose work seeks to answer global peace and conflict questions, featured thirteen scholars from Cornell University and beyond to discuss research on the institute’s focal topics of climate change and conflict, nuclear security, governance of emerging technologies, and human rights, race, and gender. The guest presenters were joined by current and former Reppy Institute Graduate Fellows , as well as Cornell graduate students who contributed as discussants.

Emphasizing the conference’s commitment to multi-disciplinary perspectives, participants included political scientists, sociologists, historians, and professional students. Equally important was the event’s support for methodological pluralism, with presented research including econometric, ethnographic, survey-experimental, text analytic, and other methodological approaches.

The first panel (Jing Ge, Florida International University; Chi Fang, University of California, San Diego; Sanghyun Han, Georgia Institute of Technology; Ahmet Ergurum, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) featured papers analyzing the governance of artificial intelligence, international arms trade and development, contemporary industrial policy, and international institutions’ growing interest in emerging technology. The papers emphasized the opportunities and challenges that sensitive and rapidly evolving technologies’ pose for contemporary geopolitics.

Moving to the second panel (Danielle Obise-Orlu, Cornell University; Bohan Zhang, Rice University; Phoebe Wagner, Cornell University), participants examined the importance of historical memory in both past and present peacebuilding efforts, strategic interstate interactions, and the construction of just and equitable societies. Scholars explored various regional perspectives on memory, analyzing how states and cultures frame history and construct memory, both for themselves and foreign audiences.

The third panel (Vierelina Fernandez, Florida International University; Maisnam Arnapal, University of California, Santa Barbara; Khilola Iakubzhanova, Cornell University) explored gendered norms and social attitudes in a range of settings, including South America, the Middle East, and South Asia. In particular, scholars emphasized the agency of communities and organizations in actively shaping these views to influence and support their members.

Finally, the fourth panel (Cecilia Cavero Sánchez, Pennsylvania State University; Lois Matthew, Cornell University) focused on the role of civil society in post-conflict and regime change conditions. From communities and municipalities to entire countries, civil society plays a vital role in mediating the spread of norms and attitudes, as well as coordinating public responses to rapid and large-scale sociopolitical shifts.

The Reppy Institute thanks the participants and looks forward to continuing its mission of furthering peace and conflict studies in the 2025 conference.

Additional Information

Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

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Peace and Conflict Studies Research Papers/Topics

Conflict in somalia: drivers and dynamics (1969-2006).

Abstract: Somalia has been without a functioning central government since January 1991, when the military regime collapsed and civil war among clan militias broke out. During the subsequent decade, de facto decentralization of political power largely along clan lines has occurred, with varying degrees of territorial control achieved by militia leaders and local administrations in different areas of the country. The study focuses on the factors and dynamics at play in the Somalia conflict by ...

International Dynamics of Internal Conflict: The Role of Slavery in the Liberian Conflict (1820 to 2003)

Abstract: Almost every internal war has an external component. Some external effects are purposive, where external actors aid and abet internal factions and governments. There are cases, however, of purposive international action that have prevented, mitigated, resolved, or managed internal conflicts. International response to conflict has always presented new dynamics to an existing conflict. The role of a variety of international actors, including individuals, states, international organiz...

United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: A Case Study of Rwanda Peace Support Operations (2004 – 2012)

Abstract: Despite the failure of the United Nations (UN) to stop the 1994 Genocide, Rwanda has been actively participating in peacekeeping operations under the African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) efforts in Sudan and troubled countries since August 2004. This study will mainly focus on three important variables through which Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) largely originate its great success in peacekeeping missions. This study examines the role of UN peacekeeping mission in Rwandan conf...

Child Protection and Conflict in Africa: A Case Analysis of Children Associated With Armed Conflict in the Horn and the Great Lakes Regions of Africa

Abstract: This paper seeks to investigate child protection/child rights in armed conflicts in the HOA and GLRA. By establishing the principles of child protection during armed conflict, the study tries to establish a conclusive analysis on the plight of CAAC in the HOA and the GLRA. In addition, the study aims at investigating the extent of the execution and implementation of child rights in armed conflict in the HOA and the GLRA, and also it aims at examining the prospect involvement of chi...

Impact of Isiolo International Airport Project on Resource-Based Conflict in Kenya: The Case of Borana in Isiolo County, 2017-2020

Abstract: Isiolo County has experienced conflict over a long time. The conflict could be best described as resource based as it has always involved one or more of the resources that the local population has been competing over, which ranges from water, pasture and land among others. Currently, there is a great flurry of land speculation and illegal acquisition where by national and county government to address resource-based conflict is expected. The study sought to investigate the impact of...

Assessing the Operationalisation of Triple Nexus in Protracted Crisis; A Case Study of South Sudan (2017-2022)

Abstract: Many communities have been thrust into humanitarian crises as the number and complexity of conflicts have increased. Despite the supply of humanitarian aid, conditions worsen, and conflicts recur. As a result, the United Nations, and its partners, including NGOs, civil society, and local or national government actors, have been compelled to employ new approaches to offer long-term solutions - the triple nexus. It specifically refers to efforts in the humanitarian, development, and ...

Reintegration of Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone from 2002 to 2021

Abstract: The use of child soldiers in West Africa has been a longstanding problem, particularly in countries affected by conflict and political instability. Children as young as 7 years old have been recruited into armed groups and used to carry out a range of activities, including combat, intelligence gathering, and forced labor. Sierra Leone is one of the West African states that faced a decade-long civil war. The use of child soldiers was a common problem in Sierra Leone's civil war, and...

The Role of Youth in Peacebuilding in the Horn of Africa with Possibility for the Establishment of the IGAD Youth Special Envoy

Abstract: The predominant image of youth with regards to peace and conflict is often negative, meaning that they are often seen as major actors when it comes to violence. Much research has tended to focus on the role of youth in violence promotion. Youth are often neglected in post-conflict reconstruction activities since it is not clear who they are. Definitions of youth are context-dependent. The trend in research is increasingly on the need to target youth since their capacities can easil...

The Role and Strategies used by Women in Conflict Management and Peacebuilding in Kenya: A Case Study of Kibera Constituency, Nairobi County (2007-2020)

Abstract: Violent conflict in Sub-Saharan Mica has been responsible for direct and indirect deaths of civilians during and after general elections. Most countries embroiled in post-election violence arc characterized by poverty, inadequate service provision, poor governance, and political instability. Violence inflicts suffering on all persons in a country, however, women are particularly more affected. During conflict women are sexually assaulted, used as tools of war: victimized, alienated...

The Effects of Government Policies on the Escalation of Terrorism: The Case of Somalia

Abstract: The rise of terrorist organizations has become a threat to African countries, for most nations have fallen due to terrorism. This situation has become worse in Somalia where terror organizations have taken over the nation due to its government policies and local conflicts. Terror organizations target such nations, for they do not possess the measures to combat organized crime or terrorism. This thesis sought to study how terror organizations manipulate local African conflicts and t...

Fragility and Regional Conflict Resolution in West Africa: An Analysis of Ecomog’s Motivation to Intervene in Liberia & Sierra Leone

Abstract: The math objective of this thesis was to examine the drivers of fragility within the West African conflict zone and the motivation of ECOMOG to intervene in both Liberia and Sierra Leone to resolve internal conflicts using regional peacekeeping arrangements. This study was guided by the following study objectives: To determine the drivers of fragility in West African conflict zone, to analyze the motivation of ECOMOG's intervention in Liberia and Sierra Leone conflict and to evalua...

The Implications of Land Resource Conflict on Communal Peace in Nandi and Narok Counties in Kenya from 1980-2019

Abstract: The study explored the implication of land resource conflict on communal peace in Nandi and Narok counties. Land resource conflict are not new in Kenya and have drastic impact on communal peace. The study's objective was to examine the implications of land resource conflict on communal peace, socio-economic and political factors attributed to the conflict and legal challenges therein. The legal and institutional challenges for land resource conflict. The study used two theories to ...

Assessing the Impact of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement in the Burundi Conflict

Abstract: The period following the Second World War was marked by a surge of intra-state conflicts on the African continent, and studies show that there have been more than thirty wars recorded in Africa since 1970 (Nhema, 2008). Burundi, a landlocked country located in East-Central Africa was of no exception. Since its independence in 1962, Burundi has been plagued by series of inter-ethnic conflicts caused by political instability and ethnic violence. The population of Burundi is made of t...

Determinants of Resource Based Conflicts in Kenya: A Case of Turkana and Pokot Conflict 1964-2019

Abstract: Ethnic conflicts over natural resources have been evident in Africa since time immemorial and this has affected the livelihood of many communities. The North Rift of Kenya is no exception to this, as communities face harsh climatic conditions leading to scarcity of resources that capacitates conflicts. This research looked at the determinants of resource based conflicts between the Pokot and Turkana communities who practice pastoralism as their main livelihood. The determinants wer...

Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration in Practice: An Investigation of Its Process on Ex-Combatants in the Post-2005 South Sudan

Abstract: Many studies have been carried out on post-conflict disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) in many countries including the Republic of South Sudan. However, to this date, there is no comprehensive literature or empirical data on the process of DDR on the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 up to date, there has not been sustainable peace in the world’s nascent state. This vexes the mind as if the world neg...

Popular Papers/Topics

The role of faith based organizations in curbing gender--based violence in nairobi county, kenya, ethno-religious conflict and settlement dynamics in plateau state, nigeria, 1994-2012, media coverage of political conflicts influncing peace building in selected hotspots in kenya since 2007 elections, the causes of northern uganda - south sudan border conflict; case study of moyo - kajokeji border, psycho-social effects of violent ethnic conflict on vulnerable groups in njoro district, kenya, conflict-sensitive journalism and the nigerian print media coverage of jos crisis, 2010-2011, peace and conflict impact assessment of the niger delta development commission’s interventions in odi, bayelsa state, nigeria, pre-war and war-time conflict management strategies of the nigerian civil war, the normative frameworks, practice and challenges of the united nations/african union partnership in peacekeeping operations, taboo systems as a conflict restraint in the political feud in zimbabwe. an exploration of mazowe and shamva districts, post independence, the role of the media in conflict situations in kenya: a case of the tana delta conflict., logical framework template for project on early warning signs of violence in abuja, conflict variables as correlates of public secondary school teachers’ productivity in adamawa state, nigeria, conflict variables as correlates of public secondary school teachers’ productivity in adamawa state nigeria, the role of religion on the st ability and development of uganda: a case study of lutheran world federation.

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IOVIS Peace & Conflict Lecture 2: The Psychology of Negotiation and Conflict Management
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2023 Religion and Foreign Policy Workshop: Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding
COVID19, peace ops, conflict analysis: Ms Natascha Hryckow
Building the Programs That Can Better Build the Peace
MYSTICISM, FALSE PROPHETS/APOSTLES & PEACE IN THE CHURCH

COMMENTS

80 Peace and Conflict Studies Research Topics
In the realm of Peace and Conflict Studies, the possibilities for research are as vast as the challenges facing our world today. Whether you're an undergraduate eager to explore the intricacies of conflict resolution, a master's student aiming to contribute to peacebuilding strategies, or a doctoral candidate seeking to deepen the field's theoretical foundations, you now have a selection ...
Research Proposal Structure for Peace Studies
Download Free PDF. Research Proposal Structure for Peace Studies1 Worrawan Jirathanapiwat: [email protected] The Master of Arts Program in Peace Studies and Diplomacy requires students to submit a thesis or an independent study (IS) as a graduation project. Principally, like comparative programs in Peace Studies, such requirement is a ...
PDF Master Thesis in Peace and Conflict Studies Spring 2017 ...
However, thus far, very little research has focussed on whether these agreements are eventually implemented. Likewise, a significant amount of research exists on why certain peace agreements are implemented while others are not (Jarstad and Nilsson 2008; Mattes and Savun 2009; DeRouen et al. 2009; DeRouen et al. 2010).
Peace Research Areas
The center has identified the following research areas as priorities for advancing peacemaking scholarship at Marquette: The process of healing and reconciliation after the use of violence (random, terror, sexual, premeditated, military). The reasons for the success or failure of peace agreements and accords in building nonviolent peaceful ...
PDF Peace Research
Research Methods for Peace and Conflict Studies Principles of Research in the Areas of Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution The following 7 Principles were created to give you an outline of what is expected of a researcher in the field of Peace and Conflict Research. These principles should be used as a guide to help you frame your
(PDF) KEY THEORIES IN PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES AND ...
Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS) is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary social science that currently borrows some of its theories from other disciplines to provide philosophical ...
Peace and conflict studies
Research area: Peace and conflict studies. 1 January 2020 until 31 December 2022. Research project. Varieties of Peace. Research area: Peace and conflict studies, Political science. 1 January 2017 until 31 December 2019. Research project. The Role of Diasporic Minority Women's Organizations in Myanmar's Conflict Transformation Process.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Peace and Conflict Studies'
Video (online) Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Peace and Conflict Studies.'. Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA ...
Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies
About this book series. This agenda-setting series of research monographs, now more than a decade old, provides an interdisciplinary forum aimed at advancing innovative new agendas for peace and conflict studies in International Relations. Many of the critical volumes the series has so far hosted have contributed to new avenues of analysis ...
PDF Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS)
PCS 608 Topics in Peace and Conflict Studies 3 Concepts such as peace, conflict, violence, war, international order, ... Develop ﬁeldwork skills, design a research proposal, and conduct research using qualitative methods. PCS 624 Peace and Justice in a Changing Climate 3 Explores justice as transformative, transnational, environmental, ...
Conflict, Peace and Security: An International Relations Perspective
Conflict, peace and security are some of the enduring concerns of the Peace Research Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. They have become integrated in the dominant disciplines of international relations (IR) and political science and now are also part of most of the social science disciplines, such as economics, sociology, public policy, gender studies, international law and so on.
Completed Dissertations
Entering an ongoing debate within peace studies about the United Nations' top-down, institutions-oriented "liberal peace," I use ethnographic research with women's peacebuilding groups in India alongside feminist political thought to argue for a "critical feminist justpeace," developed from the bottom-up and taking the diverse ...
The Efficacy of Community Peacebuilding in African Communities: Case
This article discusses the efficacy of community-based peacebuilding efforts to develop sustainable peace in conflict-torn communities. Using participatory action research (PAR) is a powerful means of developing sustainable solutions to a conflict: It provides the means to test peace theories and draw upon a community's knowledge and strengths in order to develop interventions.
Dissertations
Dissertations. Dissertations by researchers at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research are listed below. For a list of all publications, please use the advanced search option in the online catalogue DiVA and add the Department's name in the "Organisation" search field. A Scramble for Rents: Foreign Aid and Armed Conflict.
phd proposal in peace and conflict resolution
PHD PROPOSAL IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND PEACE BUILDING RESEARCH THEME: Assessing efforts of the international community towards conflict resolution and peace building in sub Saharan Africa: the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Somalia Observation: The resurgence in sub Saharan African of certain conflicts which seem to have been solved, gave way to questioning the efforts of ...
Conflict Resolution Masters Theses
Theses/Dissertations from 2014. PDF. The Impact of Economic Integration within the European Union as a Factor in Conflict Transformation and Peace-Building, John Umo Ette. PDF. Dialogue in Identity-Based Conflict (Study of Intergroup-Dialogue with University Students), Lisha Shrestha.
Sample proposals
For the Peace Advancement Challenge I propose we create a monthly paper that will encourage and inspire every generation to continue to work for peace. The paper will emphasize the ability to create change regardless of how big the problems seem. This source of information will highlight different issues that seem too big for the individual and ...
5 Fully funded PhDs in peace and conflict studies
University of Notre Dame's PhD in Peace Studies. Programme Information: The University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace regularly offers PhD scholarships in the field of Peace Studies for students willing to study in the United States. Graduates are fully credentialed in one of the six disciplines as well as in peace ...
(PDF) MASTER THESIS "Conflict Resolution and the Role of Local
main conflict drivers and to restore sustainable peace in the CAR. Furthermore, a case study analyses the effects of local religious leaders in peacebuilding and helps to answer the question
The Methodological and Epistemological Developments in Conflict and
Conflict and peace studies is a field of knowledge and a contemporary academic discipline whose theories and concepts were formed in the second half of the twentieth century. However, the ...
The PhD Programme in Peace and Conflict Research
The Department of Peace and Conflict Research offers a PhD programme that lasts for 4 years, including compulsory course work corresponding to about 1 year of fulltime studies. PhD candidates are often involved in teaching or administration up to 20% of their time, so it may take up to 5 years to complete the PhD programme.
PDF Researching conﬂict in Africa
INCORE (International Conﬂict Research) at the University of Ulster is associated with the United Nations University and has worked in part-nership with their Peace and Governance Programme on this research programme. We also collaborated with CEPACS (The Centre for Peace and Conﬂict Studies) at the Universityof Ibadan, Nigeria, and are partic-
Peace and Conflict Studies Annual Graduate Student Conference Review
The academic workshop, which aims to bring together graduate students whose work seeks to answer global peace and conflict questions, featured thirteen scholars from Cornell University and beyond to discuss research on the institute's focal topics of climate change and conflict, nuclear security, governance of emerging technologies, and human rights, race, and gender.
Peace and Development Studies Research Papers/Topics
The objective of this research is to respond to the question of the connection between Boko Haram in Nigeria and the wave of Global Jihadist Movement. The paper shall address to what extent the Boko Haram group reflects the ideology of the Global Jihadist Movement. Save Noel Onyeulo 9 PAGES (2905 WORDS) Peace and Development Studies Paper. «. 1.
Peace and Conflict Studies Books and Book Reviews
Conflict and Conflict Management A Case Study of Tharaka and Tigania Clans of Meru Community in Kenya. ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to establish the causes of conflicts between the Tharaka and Tigania clans and how that conflict is managed by various stakeholders. The study has analyzed the following objectives: causes of conflicts ...