More than 450 attendees from 37 different countries will travel to the University of Notre Dame campus to participate in the Building Sustainable Peace conference hosted by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, taking place Thursday through Sunday (Nov. 7-10).
The conference, which grows out of the institute’s recently launched five-year strategic plan, will explore the state of the field of peace research and practice, and the nexus between them. Keynote addresses, film screenings and panel discussions throughout the weekend are designed to animate conversations about the synergies and the contestations between theory and practice, the field and the classroom, and the different local, national, regional and global orientations toward peace.
“We live at a time where challenges to peace and justice are mounting around the world,” says Asher Kaufman, the John M. Regan Jr. Director of the Kroc Institute. “In the past decade, violence, in all of its forms, has significantly increased globally. Our hope is that this conference will support the scholarship and work of peace studies scholars and practitioners as they work to alleviate suffering and violence around the world.”
The conference will feature 290 presenters participating in over 65 sessions, each focused on a different topic or current event within the multidisciplinary field of peace studies. Topics include climate change and environmental violence; restorative justice practices; peacemaking in active conflict zones; new technology, violence and peace; gender and peacebuilding; peace agreement monitoring in Colombia; and more.
The full conference schedule is available for review online.
Keynote speakers for the conference include:
- Séverine Autesserre, professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University.
- Sergio Jaramillo Caro, Colombia’s former high commissioner of peace and Colombian ambassador to Belgium.
- sujatha baliga, director of the Restorative Justice Project and Just Beginnings Collaborative Fellow at Impact Justice.
- John Paul Lederach, professor emeritus of international peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute and senior fellow at Humanity United.
In addition, a panel of experts including Gearoid Millar of the University of Aberdeen, Elias Omondi Opongo of the Hekima Institute of Peace Studies and International Relations, and Lisa Schirch of the Toda Peace Institute, will participate in a conversation on the state of the field of peace studies from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Friday (Nov. 8). Mahan Mirza of Notre Dame’s Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion will serve as the panel moderator.
All plenary sessions will be livestreamed on the Kroc Institute’s website.
You can also follow the conference on social media by using #KrocConf19.
All times listed above are Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5).
About the Kroc Institute: The University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, is one of the world’s leading centers for the study of the causes of violent conflict and strategies for sustainable peace.
Contact: Hannah Heinzekehr, Kroc Institute, hheinzek@nd.edu, 574-631-1808
Originally published by at kroc.nd.edu on November 05, 2019.