Peace and Planning

Category: Wayfinding

  • Epis(ys)temology: How should our knowledge of systems be used for change?

    In my Peace Engineering and Participatory Approaches to Narrative Methodology class this week, we talked about that infamous PowerPoint slide trying to detail all the aspects of the American strategy in Afghanistan and whether it was helpful to have that view of a conflict system, particularly from a complexity theory…

  • I’ve been a bit testy(mony) lately

    I’ve recently enjoyed the privileges of living in a democracy, where members of the public can sign up to speak at district department performance oversight hearings. Councilmembers listen to testimonies of folks from all walks of life, and my fellow citizens wait for hours to share three minutes of their…

  • Toasting 2022 with a smorgasbord (of thoughts)

    I arrived at the end of 2021 feeling exhausted yet exhilarated – I had completed my first semester as a PhD student without fumbling spectacularly. I had read thousands of pages of literature (favorite books: Bananas, Beaches, and Bases; Constructing Community; Street Fight), had grappled with hundreds of ideas and…

  • Peace, Planning…and Pedagogy?

    I just posted a lesson plan for the final project of my Pedagogy and Conflict Analysis & Resolution class. Check it out at https://planwell.link/peacelearner! Or if you’re feeling about as tuckered out as I am right now and can’t imagine having to move to another website, just check out the…

  • A (Bar-)Tal[l] Order: Defining Intractable Conflict

    The first full book (okay, I skimmed some chapters but at a whopping 458 pages I think it still counts!) I read as a PhD student was Daniel Bar-Tal’s Intractable Conflicts: Socio-Psychological Foundations and Dynamics. If you have in mind a book that’s dense, meandering at times, and jam packed…

  • Freire brings the f(re)ire to pedagogy

    So you might be wondering, what courses does a PhD student in peace and conflict resolution take? What does one do in those classes? Admittedly it’s still early in the semester, but I figured I’d share a bit about my experience thus far to shed some light on this, and…