Learning Journeys text
Please join us in our learning journey!
Below you will find a series of reflective blogs and presentations by different members of the Visualising Peace team. In sharing our individual experiences of studying peace and peacebuilding in different disciplines, we hope to involve and inspire others – both people new to peace studies and those with lots of experience already. Like peacebuilding itself, understanding peace is a joint endeavour – and we can learn a lot from sharing knowledge across different fields of learning, experience and expertise.
Drawing directly on entries in our Visualising Peace Library, some of the blogs and presentations below dive deep into specific aspects of peace studies. Others highlight productive contrasts and connections between different habits of studying, theorising and practicing peace in different disciplines and sectors. They look back at past trends, while also posing new research questions and identifying future pathways for more interdisciplinary, cross-sector, collaborative study. We hope you enjoy dipping into them as part of your own learning journey!
- Peace Education for, with and by Young People – by Otilia Meden. In this blog, Visualising Peace student Otilia reflects on the new questions which her research into peace education has prompted her to ask. She particularly discusses the co-production of peace education with young people, the importance of inner peace, and the contextual nature of young people’s understandings of peace.
- Peace and Place – by Eleni Spilliotes. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Eleni Spilliotes discusses the research she has been doing into place-making as a form of peace-making. She draws on publications from a wide range of disciplines, and considers examples of place/peace-making in several different countries and contexts. Below the video, you can find a summary of the publications she discusses. These are also available in our Visualising Peace Library.
- Peace, Sustainability and Politics – by Kim Wahnke. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Kim Wahnke discusses the connections made between environmentalism, peace and politics in interdisciplinary scholarship. This is part of her wider research into discourses of peace within democratic politics. She is interested in how peaceful (or not) electoral processes tend to be, what attention political campaigns pay to peace and peace-building, and how closely linked democracy and peace are (or are not) in different contexts. Along with the video, you can find a summary of the publications she discusses. These are also available in our Visualising Peace Library.
- Agency: peace in peace studies, media studies and pedagogy – by Ekin Cotuk. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Ekin Cotuk discusses some of the scholarship she has been reading in different fields about peace linguistics, language education policies, the agency that people derive from language learning/fluency, and their intersection with peace and peace-building.
- Verbum Vincent: Psychology and Narrative in the Future of Peace-building – by Mathias Katsura. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Mathias Katsura discusses some of the scholarship he has been reading about the affective impact of storytelling in peace-building. He discusses what is missing from current approaches, reviews a series of case studies where effective use of narratives has helped to underpin key steps in conflict cessation/resolution and peace-building, and outlines some key takeaways about ‘winning the mind, winning the day, and winning the peace’.
- The Republic of Ireland and the Northern Irish Conflict – by Aimee Capraro. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Aimee Capraro discusses some of the scholarship she has been reading about the role played by different cultural movements within the Republic of Ireland in promoting or threatening peace in Northern Ireland. Among other topics, she looks at publications on the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) and Irish language teaching/use.
- Inner Peace – by Otilia Meden. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Otilia Meden discusses some of the scholarship she has been reading about care and self-care in peace-building – both for locals impacted by conflict and for peace practitioners and researchers. She highlights important links between self-care and communal compassion, and also engages with the idea of ‘radicalising resilience’ in relation to women survivors of war.
- Visualising Peace and Place in Different Disciplines – by Margaux de Seze. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Margaux de Seze discusses some of the scholarship she has been reading about the relationship between peace and place. She also reviews an article about ‘peace’ in Sri Lanka, as a ‘peretrator’s peace’, experienced as ongoing oppression and violence by many. Margaux offers some reflections about the value of cross-disciplinary reading as we continue to deepen our understanding of different kinds of peace and peace-building.
- (non)Academic Style: autoethnography and transrationality in peace education – by Joe Walker. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Joe Walker discusses some of the scholarship he has been reading on peace education. He looks particularly at emotional (as opposed to cognitive) approaches to peace education, and reflects on the use of auto ethnography and the theory of ‘transrationality’ in teaching practices.
- America Catholic Pacifism in the 20th Century – by Thomas Frost. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Thomas Frost discusses some of the scholarship he has been reading on pacifism within American Catholicism.
- Gaming and Bilingualism in Peace Education – by Shengyuan Ji. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Shengyuan Ji discusses a range of publications that cover gaming and bilingualism as interesting manifestations of peace education, not only in the classroom but also in military training contexts.
- Navigating AI in Peacebuilding, Conflict Resolution and Restorative Justice – by Isabel Frasier. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Isabel Frasier discusses ‘the good, the bad, and the ugly’ of AI’s current and potential applications in conflict and peacebuilding.
- Narratives of Peace in South American 20th-century literature – by Christy Forshaw. In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Christy Forshaw discusses some theoretical scholarship on ‘peace literature’ and reflects on some examples she has found of this little-studied genre in South American literature from the 20th century. She discusses how thinking about ‘peace literature’ as a genre can help us reframe, rethink and re-engage with texts which we often classify and interpret in different (more conflict-focused) ways.
- ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’: international relations, peace and the way forward – by Mathias Katsuya. This presentation examines the dominance the ‘liberal peace’ narrative in the field of International Relations. Beyond explaining the theoretical underpinnings of ‘liberal peace’, it discusses the consequences of assuming the universality of particular visualisations of peace for both academia and real-world peacebuilding efforts. Katsuya then outlines alternative conceptualizations of peace, illustrating instances of success through contemporary case studies ranging from post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland to present-day Somaliland.
- Human Nature and the Potential for Peace – by Claire Percival. In this presentation, Claire reflects on what she has learnt about different habits of studying peace by comparing approaches in Modern History and Social Anthropology. She underlines the importance of de-centring heavily theory-based, ‘standard’ Western narratives of peace, as simply the opposite of conflict. She also problematises tendencies in some anthropological scholarship that promote indigenous people and belief systems as ‘models’ of peace/peaceful practices which Western initiatives can simply adopt/utilise. Claire’s analysis underlines what these two different disciplines can learn from each other, and what they can offer together in deepening our understanding of peace itself and of the various ideologies that different communities attach to it.
- Royal Beheadings and Christian Peace Committees: how the visualisation of peace in the Medieval and Early Modern Era differed throughout Europe – by Kara Devlin. In this blog Kara discusses some of the items she has added to The Visualising Peace Library. Focusing on Medieval History, she highlights some important facts about the ways in which people experienced, understood and worked towards peace in this era – and she also draws attention to some of our blindspots in studying Medieval peace-making.
- A Timeline of Peace in the Medieval Period – by Kara Devlin. In this blog Kara introduces a data visualisation experiment, which she has designed to help us visualise how peace was experienced, described, imagined and worked for by Scottish and English participants in a series of Anglo-Scottish wars during the Medieval and Early Modern periods.
- Bridging the gap between theory and practice – by Harris Siderfin. In this video, Harris discusses a range of items he has included in the Visualising Peace Library, particularly relating to peace education.
- Peace in Post-Conflict Societies: conflict and intergroup contact theory – by Harris Siderfin. In this video Harris discusses his research into intergroup conflict and social identity theory, particularly in post-conflict societies. Drawing on scholarship from Psychology and International Relations, he explores how different relationships are built within communities (both directly and through indirect means, such as via storytelling in different media) and the forces that create outgroups and segregation. He argues for more attention to be paid to social identities in understanding and building peace.