The Joint Research Seminar in Peacebuilding: Partnership through Mutual Inquiry

Tue, February 23, 2021
6:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Online Event

Panelists from the Peace Research and Education Program (PREP) at NYU SPS traced the arc of their relationship with FUNRESURPAZ, a local research organization based in Algeciras, Colombia — one of the municipalities most affected by violence during the more than 50 years of armed internal conflict. The journey between the two institutions began one year into implementation of the comprehensive peace agreement, when representatives of Colombia’s national public administration school (ESAP) reached out to PREP for curricular support. As a response to this request, PREP developed the Joint Research Seminar in Peacebuilding, which brought together students from ESAP and master’s students from NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. Together they carried out participatory action field research focused on local understandings of peace and perceptions of the reparations process.

Panelists will reflect on the challenges of building equitable academic partnerships that draw on endogenous peacebuilding capacities as well as the successes of its collaboration with the Colombian students, who have transformed themselves from a student research group into an autonomous research organization known as FUNRESURPAZ. The collaboration’s success can be measured not only in the number of interviews conducted, books printed or grants awarded, but also in the durability of relationships, the proliferation of peacebuilding actors and actions in Algeciras, and the insights developed into how international actors can more effectively support peacebuilding in Colombian communities.

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