Conflict resolution is often divided between peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. Peacemaking aims to stop outright violence, thus allowing peacekeeping and peacebuilding to occur. This course explores the theory and practice of peacemaking, and the processes at its core, negotiation and mediation. It provides students with an in-depth analysis of key theoretical concepts in the study of international negotiation and international mediation and teaches them how to apply these concepts. Theories are illuminated by concrete case studies, to see how culture, context, and conflict dynamics affect the negotiation process.
Excursion – Israel/Palestine
What does it mean to live in a (post)conflict-zone? How does the legacy of violence affect people’s daily lives? How are territorial borders of all kinds made and how do they shape people’s lives? What are the imaginative geographies of conflict and why are they important? How does identity play a role in transforming conflict at all levels? How do international politics and intervention play out on the ground? This course addresses these questions by focusing on the case of the conflict in Israel/Palestine. Central to the course is a one-week excursion that presents students with an opportunity to witness real-life impact and meaning of conflict.
War and State Building in Afghanistan
This course introduces students to scholarship on state formation and its relationship to violence and foreign intervention, with a particular focus on Afghanistan. Students get acquainted with important debates regarding state making, war making, and state–society relations. They are be asked to question the relevance of theoretical models and the nature of statehood, in light of the Afghan case. The seminar then turns to the state–building project currently implemented in Afghanistan and encourages students to think of the necessary trade–offs as they try to analyze the complexity of international interventions.
Approaches to Peacebuilding
Since peace agreements are often broken, peacekeeping (guaranteeing a ceasefire so that parties can negotiate an agreement) and peacemaking (reaching a settlement) do not suffice to achieve durable peace. The concept of peacebuilding has come into existence to address the underlying causes of conflict and deal with the legacies of war. The course outlines the rise and development of the concept and practices of peacebuilding and questions the peacebuilders’ assumptions and models. The course brings together institutional approaches to peacebuilding and individual ones and shows they can only work together.
Political & Geographical Conflict Resolution
In this course, students become acquainted with the various geographical and political strategies for the prevention, management, and resolution of violent conflicts. Students learn to recognize the different levels of the spatial dimension of conflict prevention, management, and resolution and learn to deconstruct the various discourses on the subject and place them into perspective. The substantive focus of the course is on conflict resolution following violent intra-state conflict/civil war (as opposed to inter-state and societal conflict).
PhD Supervision
Islamic Rebel Rulers: Rise, Development, and Fall of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia (Shoki Hayir)
Shoki’s research, which I supervise together with Marcel Wissenburg, explores the implementation of governance by Islamist movements, focusing on the case of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia. In the Summer of 2006, the ICU, largely supported by the local population, set up a system of Shari’ah-based governance to rule over Southern Somalia. What explains the rise and fall of the ICU? This is what Shoki investigates, hence shedding light on how and why more and more Islamist movements seek to answer socio-political issues and exert power by establishing an Islamic state.
