This article examines the implementation and evolution of the 2017 peace agreement in Galkaio, a divided town in central Somalia marking the border of clan and state boundaries. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and a trans-scalar peacebuilding framework, the study explores how peace has been sustained through adaptive mediation, local political agency, and the revival of customary law (xeer), rather than formal institutions or international oversight. While the agreement has brought a degree of stability and investment, it remains vulnerable to relapse due to a fragmented security landscape, unresolved inter-clan tensions, and weak governance structures. Conceptually, the paper challenges linear models of peace implementation, arguing instead that peace must be understood as a fluid, negotiated process embedded in political 'unsettlement'. By linking political economy analysis with trans-scalar dynamics, the article contributes to debates on local peace processes and offers insights for sustaining peace amid institutional fragility.
This article develops an epistemic critique and research manifesto for peace and conflict studies, arguing that contemporary 'turbulence' is generated as much by epistemic infrastructures and failures as by geopolitical shocks. After a detailed engagement with a recent Peacebuilding forum, it offers an alternative, more systematic take on peace and conflict, going beyond the forum's 'turbulence'. Specifically, it reconceptualises the post-Cold War 'liberal peace' not as a bounded era but as a contested repertoire that mutates through endogenous institutional change, with managerial conditionalities and externalised responsibility persisting after rights-language recedes. It then identifies ten field-level failures-peace-and-war compartmentalisation, concept-led deduction, historical and subaltern amnesia, institutional flattening, methodological echo-chambering, spatial illiteracy, proximity-to-power, humanitarian techno-solutionism, audit-driven valuation, and publication time-lag-showing how peace knowledge becomes curatorial while coercive ordering is rebranded as stability. The manifesto-representing the consequent part of my intervention-treats peace as a primary institution co-produced with war and assembled within composite political orders, mapping authority through political/organisational economies of power, and tracing infrastructures of connectivity and constraint. It closes by advancing a triage-oriented agenda of priorities and practices for the field, oriented to epistemic justice and to peace measured against fairness, sustainability, relationality, and intergenerational responsibility.
This study explores the role of internet memes as a form of everyday peace practice in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It asks: how do internet memes reflect or challenge societal divisions in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina? Employing a qualitative methodology, the research analyses over one hundred memes using thematic analysis. Findings show many memes satirise identity-based divisions and political dysfunction, opening space for discursive engagement and highlighting shared frustrations across ethnic lines, while others reinforce ethnic stereotypes or glorify war crimes, revealing the persistence of polarising narratives. This dual function illustrates how memes can both disrupt and sustain social divides. While some memes fall short of promoting reconciliation or peaceful coexistence, many contribute to dialogue and offer constructive, if irreverent, critiques of Bosnia and Herzegovina's post-war landscape. By creating opportunities for cross-community reflection through humour, these digital artefacts can function as informal mechanisms of everyday peace.
The present article argues that museum environments serve as epistemic architectures through which different forms of peace are rendered thinkable. Building on the 'turn to peace' within New Museology, it also introduces the concept of dissonant reflection or a processual form of reflection - characterised by unresolved interpretative tension and fostered through spatial and informational aides within museum spaces (using Gandhi Smriti as a focal point, here). Additionally, the article then embraces a comparative reading of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe to identify other curatorial logics that support different imaginations of peace - opening a discursive space for curatorial epistemology that is capable of representing not just what peace has been but also what peace could be.
In a context where 'unofficial', community-led initiatives have filled the absence of an 'official', government-sponsored system of memorialising stories since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the proposal in the 2023 Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act to create a new oral history archive presents an opportunity to examine the compatibility of both approaches. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with civil society oral history practitioners in Northern Ireland, this article identifies sustaining trusting relationships as key to the successful implementation of oral history in a society affected by sustained division and violent conflict. Comparing the status quo of a loose network of oral history projects and a scenario in which existing initiatives are consolidated into a centralised archive, this article argues that a hybrid hub-and-spokes framework that benefits from institutionalised support while maintaining the existing web of relationships with communities is most appropriate for facilitating personal healing and societal reconciliation.
Peace studies scholars have recently participated in decolonial challenges to global structures of power, including calls to re-centre non-Western knowledge(s) to expose the oppressive nature of technocratic approaches to peace. Scholarly practice remains at odds with this commitment. We present a bibliometric analysis of 513,564 citations from 13,257 journal articles published between 2015 and 2022. Cross-disciplinary research has found citational practices to be exclusionary, reinforcing hegemonic understandings of whose ideas matter. Peace studies conforms to this trend. Citations in the field are heavily dominated by Western scholars, with scholars affiliated with institutions in developing countries barely cited. This is of particular concern given the calls made within the field to pay more attention to knowledge about peace - both philosophical and practical - produced by marginalised communities. Achieving citational justice in our field requires a deeper commitment to centring the thinking of non-Western scholars.
This article examines how international peacekeeping deployments (re)shape the militarised masculinities of South Korean soldiers. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with former peacekeepers across ranks and roles, the study identifies three domains - interpretations of missions, engagements with host populations, and perceptions of female peacekeepers - as key sites of masculine identity construction. The findings show that while peacekeeping can foster more relational and humanitarian masculinities in certain contexts, it may also reinforce dominant gender norms, particularly in high-risk environments and in relation to female personnel. Rather than producing a linear transformation, peacekeeping generates context-dependent and internally contradictory masculinities shaped by operational conditions, institutional frameworks, and situated experiences. The article contributes to micro-level analyses of peacekeeping and militarised masculinity by demonstrating how gendered military identities are constructed and negotiated through the interplay of national ideology, institutional culture, and everyday practice.
This article explores localised dialogue by examining the Famagusta Dialogues, a Track Two initiative bridging ethno-communal divisions in Cyprus. Anchored in Varosha-Famagusta, the dialogues are analysed through conflict transformation, spatial theory, and memory politics. Drawing on theories of space, memory and dialogue, the article argues that Famagusta functions as both a chronotope and hauntological archive. Five core findings emerge: the inadequacy of binary framings; memory and imagination as dialogical resources; affective belonging; cross-community solidarities; and engaging both commonality and difference. Through critical ethnography, the study identifies three communal constellations including a hybrid third-space cohort embodying alternative reconciliation imaginaries. The article contributes to debates on intercommunal dialogue, place-based identity, and transitional justice by showing how localised interventions can challenge nationalistic paradigms. It repositions Famagusta not only as a symbol of Cyprus's division but as a living archive where melancholia, memory, and imagination offer resources for a future yet to be articulated.
PeaceTech, the use of AI and other digital technologies in peacebuilding, is often praised as a transformative approach to conflict prevention and dialogue. Yet the field remains conceptually vague and ethically fraught. Tools meant to empower communities can also enable surveillance when crowdsourced data exposes vulnerable groups. Innovation is often constrained by legacy institutions that collect data but lack the capacity to interpret or act on it. AI powered platforms may increase visibility, but early warning alerts frequently fail to produce effective responses. At the same time, corporate control over infrastructures such as cloud services and satellite internet raises concerns about the public good, while globally designed systems often clash with local realities and reinforce digital colonialism. Drawing on scholarship and practitioner insights, this article argues that these are structural rather than accidental problems. It calls for guardrails including service continuity, community data ownership, algorithmic accountability, and response protocols tied to funding, solidarity, and justice.
Over the past two decades, the literature on peacebuilding has become increasingly fragmented. In response to the UN's "Sustaining Peace" agenda, new theories have emerged to explain how practitioners adapt their practices. Recent analyses distinguish between approaches that "expand" and those that "narrow" peace. However, the factors that drive peacebuilders to revise their visions and strategies remain understudied. This paper examines how transformative political events, particularly failed peace processes, shape the perspectives of peace activists. Focusing on Israel and Palestine, we differentiate between the Oslo and post-Oslo generations. Drawing on more than 100 interviews with Israeli and Palestinian activists and an overview of current debates surrounding the Oslo Accords, we identify clear generational differences. Activists who experienced the Oslo process tend to narrow peace by prioritizing pragmatic efforts to sustain dialogue. In contrast, activists who know Oslo only retrospectively tend to expand peace by linking it to broader goals such as social justice and structural change.
Field research in peace and conflict (PC) research has changed as a result of intellectual trends, in particular the 'local turn', without a sufficient reflection on ethical practice. The growing need for contextualised data in both qualitative and quantitative research continues to encourage more PC researchers to collect their own data, often relying on institutional collaborations, 'local' research assistants, or remote research techniques. Climate change and the decolonialisation imperative provide two additional (ethical) justifications for rethinking current approaches to (field) research. This article discusses the often-invisible ethical issues and harms resulting from the need for more granular data, including its political economies and structural inequalities, that raise ethical issues beyond formal ethics applications. It elucidates four pathways for field research, outlining the challenges to knowledge production and the resulting ethical issues. The article concludes by advocating for broader reflection and an integrated ethics, highlighting the discipline's inherent ethical responsibility.
This article examines how the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) produce judgements about international violence. It traces the epistemological roots of conflict analysis methodologies, arguing their institutionalisation failed to resolve inherent weaknesses. A unified approach of different epistemological traditions provides a shared analytical language, but their institutionalisation privileges administrative legibility, consensus, and political alignment over sharp or disruptive judgement. Drawing on existing research, as well as questionnaire and interview data from FCDO officials, it highlights how bureaucratic structures, internal information ecosystems, and task framing introduce noise and bias into analytical processes. Conflict analysis in the FCDO functions less as a neutral decision-support tool than a politically conditioned form of organisational sense-making. The findings underscore the limits of technocratic analysis and challenge claims that analytical work is insulated from political pressures. The article calls for a more self-reflexive and independent frameworks to support critical judgement in foreign policy settings.
This article explores how women negotiators navigate the challenges associated with gender discrimination in official peace negotiations. Drawing on interviews with 21 women negotiators from 14 countries, the study identifies strategies they employ to overcome barriers, asserting their roles as effective peacemakers. By situating these findings within the framework of gendered power dynamics, the study advances the discourse on inclusive peace processes and offers policy recommendations for fostering gender equality at negotiation tables. It also demonstrates that while the inclusion of women at peace tables is vital for achieving descriptive representation, the way they enact their roles is highly dependent on context, and is influenced by various factors, including the intersectionality of woman negotiator identity with other social identities (i.e. political ideology, race, class, and age) as well as the reasons they were selected to participate as negotiators.
This article assesses change and continuity in international mediation. Using Peace Observatory data, it shows that many core practices have remained strikingly stable: the average number of mediators per round is unchanged, UN involvement remains steady, coercive mediation efforts have not increased, ceasefires occur at similar rates across periods, and leadership dispersion in high-profile, often P5-entangled conflicts is similarly consistent over time. Yet, despite this continuity, mediation today feels different to diplomats and experts. Why? This article advances the argument that the difference lies less in what mediators do than in the ontologies and approaches that frame their work. The once-dominant liberal template has lost prominence, perhaps most visibly reflected in the greater visibility of non-Western mediators advancing sovereigntist or stability-oriented norms, though the involvement of these actors in mediation is nothing new. Mediation now unfolds in a more plural landscape where liberal, coercive, and transactional logics coexist and compete.
Conflict and peace across Central Eurasia are largely approached through state-centric, security-oriented and transformation-based perspectives in peace studies, leaving societal peacemaking in this region under-researched. Drawing on the concept of Ethnographic Peace Research, this article explores and conceptualises key features of customary peacemaking in selected contexts in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Avoiding romanticisation, it argues that ordinary people exercise peace agency despite economic hardship and beyond the often-dysfunctional state. Ethnographic findings show how, why and to what extent dense relationalities in extended family structures constitute sources of hierarchical and gendered peace. They also demonstrate relational, self-organised and resilient peace through conflict containment, togetherness and creative contestation in neighbourhoods and communities. While these forms of situated customary peace can accommodate issues of power and social change, they also compel communities to adapt and reconsider traditional norms. Overall, these findings on customary peacemaking challenge peace studies' limited engagement with multiple issues of difference.
Youth are increasingly seen as key players in peace-building. This study examines the role of the Amhara Youth Association (AYA), specifically the Bahir Dar City Youth Association (BCYA), in peace-building efforts. It uses qualitative data gathered from semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis. The study also explores youth peace-building activities across the political, social, economic, and security spheres. The findings show that while AYA/BCYA has been active in community security, humanitarian efforts, political advocacy, and livelihood support, it faces challenges from high unemployment, limited funding, political pressure, and weak institutional support. Despite these challenges, there are still opportunities for meaningful youth involvement in peace-building. These include supportive policy frameworks, a large membership base, and a growing recognition of youth civic engagement in society. To alleviate these challenges, significant efforts are required, particularly from the government, to create an enabling environment for youth to play a greater role in peace-building.
