Blog
Through our growing set of blogs, we want to highlight productive connections and contrasts between different habits of studying, theorising and practicing peace in different disciplines and sectors. Please browse below to find out more:
- ‘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.