The “Skill Building Event: AI Ethics Checklist for Peacebuilding Practitioners” was a practical, skills-based session focused on helping students think critically about the role of AI in peacebuilding work. Led by Katerina Siira and Marine Ragnat, the event introduced a framework designed specifically for practitioners, offering a tool that can be used in the field when encountering AI-driven projects, whether in implementation, advisory roles, or when assessing whether AI is appropriate in a given context.

The session went beyond theory and focused on real-world application. Participants engaged with case examples and practiced asking key questions around power dynamics, data ownership, consent, and accountability. Rather than presenting AI as purely beneficial or harmful, the discussion encouraged a more nuanced approach, thinking through both the risks and potential opportunities of AI in peacebuilding contexts. The event aimed to make AI ethics more accessible and practical, giving students a clearer sense of how these tools are already shaping the field and how they might be used responsibly moving forward.

PREP’s 2nd annual  “Mingle & Jingle: Holiday Networking Night” brought together two dozen students for an evening of meaningful, low-pressure engagement with an incredible group of professionals, including Kirsi Joenpolvi, Djeyhoun Ostowar, Riva Kantowitz, Céline Monnier, Vijayta Narang, and Michelle Rivera.  It was truly a great way to wrap up a semester full of dynamic events from the NYU Peace and Research Education Program team!

Designed as a more relaxed alternative to traditional networking, the event used a rotating, table-based format that allowed students to move between conversations, connect in smaller groups, and engage more directly with practitioners across the peacebuilding and international affairs fields. This setup made it easier to ask questions, hear about real career paths, and get a clearer sense of what working in the field actually looks like in practice. The professionals represented a wide range of roles, from UN agencies to NGOs and policy-focused organizations, offering students exposure to diverse career trajectories. Conversations focused on everything from navigating internships and job searches to translating academic experience into practical work, while also creating space for honest discussions about challenges, pivots, and lessons learned.

This fun, cheery end-of-semester event felt less like traditional networking and more like a series of meaningful one-on-one or small group conversations. It was a valuable opportunity for students to build connections and head into the next semester with a stronger sense of direction and possibility. Many thanks to the NYU Peace and Conflict Transformation (PaCT) club for co-sponsoring, and to Océane Hooks-Camilleri for adding a remote element to an otherwise in-person gathering.

The event, “Peace in Progress: Women's Voices on Justice and Repair, A Conversation with Israeli & Palestinian Peacemakers,” was a roundtable-style discussion that created space for an honest and deeply human conversation about peacebuilding in the current moment. Hosted in collaboration with Combatants for Peace, the session brought together two speakers, Noa Harrell and Nimala Kharoufeh, who shared their lived experiences working across conflict lines and their ongoing efforts to support communities, particularly in Gaza, amid continued violence and instability.

The structure of the event was intentionally simple and conversational. After a brief welcome and introduction, the speakers shared their personal stories, how they each came to peacebuilding work, and what it means to engage in nonviolent co-resistance in a context shaped by trauma, loss, and political tension. Their perspectives were especially powerful because they came from different lived experiences, one Israeli and one Palestinian, yet were grounded in a shared commitment to dialogue, accountability, and collective healing. The core of the event was an open Q&A discussion, which allowed for a more honest and unscripted exchange. Rather than a formal presentation, the conversation centered on real-time questions about what their work actually looks like right now, especially in relation to Gaza. They spoke about the challenges of continuing peacebuilding efforts during ongoing conflict, the emotional toll of the work, and the importance of maintaining relationships and dialogue even in moments of deep grief and division.

A major theme throughout was the idea of choosing repair over revenge, and how that choice is not abstract, but something that requires constant effort, especially in a context where communities are experiencing loss and fear. They also emphasized the role of grassroots movements like Combatants for Peace in creating alternative pathways forward, rooted in solidarity, nonviolence, and shared humanity.  The event concluded with closing remarks and informal conversation, giving participants space to continue engaging with the speakers and reflect on what they had heard. Overall, the discussion stood out for how honest and grounded it felt, less about presenting solutions, and more about sharing what it actually looks like to do peacebuilding work in real time, in the middle of ongoing conflict.

Peacebuilding concentration alumni at the NYU SPS Center for Global Affairs continue to give back in meaningful ways to the current student community. Recently, the NYU Peace Research and Education Program co-hosted an event with the NYU Peace and Conflict Transformation (PaCT) club featuring Océane Hooks-Camilleri and Love Odih Kumuyi, who led the session, “Exploring What’s Next: Career Transitions Through a Systems Lens.” The event was designed as a reflective, virtual community space to support students navigating the uncertainty of post-graduate transitions. Rather than treating career decisions as purely individual choices, the session encouraged participants to think more holistically, situating their skills, experiences, and aspirations within a broader system shaped by networks, institutions, expectations, and structural constraints.

Using systems thinking as a light framework, Océane and Love challenged students to move beyond traditional career paths or well-worn employers and instead consider how their roles might fit within the larger peacebuilding ecosystem. The session balanced reflection and interaction, beginning with a group check-in that surfaced a range of emotions about life after graduation, from excitement to uncertainty, before moving into breakout discussions. In smaller groups, participants mapped their own “career systems,” identifying key influences such as mentors, financial pressures, opportunities, and personal motivations, and examining how these elements are interconnected. By “zooming in and out,” students were able to recognize patterns, gaps, and new insights about how they approach their next steps. The session concluded with a full group discussion and reflections, emphasizing curiosity over certainty and awareness over immediate decision-making. The event offered a refreshing shift toward more optimistic, capacity-focused thinking. Rather than centering fear or perceived deficits, it encouraged students to better understand the systems shaping their paths and to approach their transitions with greater clarity, confidence, and a broader sense of possibility.

Join us for a powerful screening of There Is Another Way. In the midst of darkness, we discover who we truly are. There is Another Way tells the story of a group of visionaries who refuse to surrender to violence and injustice, and in doing so show that another path is possible - for them, for us, and for all humanity. As we are all faced with essential questions about who we are, will we choose collective liberation, where the needs, rights, and safety of all are prioritized - in which our humanity comes first, knowing that no one is free until everyone is free.

Combatants for Peace, nominated for two Nobel Peace Prizes, is an extraordinary bi-national group of former enemy combatants - Israelis and Palestinians - working together during an ongoing armed conflict. Confronted with the devastation and escalating violence of October 7th and the war in Gaza, the very core of the movement faces great challenges in showing that there is another way. The first question they must answer relates to their own beliefs...is this possible?

🗓 Wednesday, April 30
🕔 5:00 – 7:00 PM
📍 Meyer Hall, Room 121, 6 Washington Pl.

Followed by a panel discussion with Director & Producer Stephen Apkon. Don’t miss this important conversation about hope, humanity, and the power of choosing a different path.

🔗 Register now 

PREP’s Reflection From The Field series started fourteen years ago as the first students in the Workshop in Applied Peacebuilding came back from their summer consultancies. Every year, students share their experiences working with local organizations and reflect on the work they have accomplished with them. The students panel was followed by a practioners panel and a reception. 

On the theme of Turning Decolinization Rhetoric Into Action, students shared the practical steps they have taken before and during their consultancies to avoid replicating some of the paterns they have been learning about and ‘do no harm’. A recurent topic in the conversation was the ability to listen to the others and learn from them while conducting the different projects. Whether they were in Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Liberia, Jordan, or Iraq, students all agreed on the necessity for more localized peacebuilding which centers more on people than project. 

After the students panel, Gulalai Ismail (Aware Girls Pakistan), Tala Bautista (Coffee for Peace), Grace Boone (CDA Collaborative Learning Projects) and Vahe Mirikan (Peace Direct) took the stage for a discussion moderated by Professor Thomas Hill. The practioners shared their organization’s approach to decolonizing peacebuilding. Funding was an important topic of conversation, and  Gulalai argued that peacebuilding needs to reflect the needs of the communities rather than respond to funding opportunities. Indeed, Tala explained that understanding what peace means for the community by asking them is a necessary step to peacebuilding which generates rich answers that are not the text book. Both Gulalai and Tala insisted on accountability towards the communities rather than solely towards the donors and the importance of not getting trapped in one or two years projects. A language shift that was deemed necessary by all panelists was replacing the terms ‘recipients’ and ‘beneficiaries’ with ‘partners’, which they all do in their organizations. 

On the relationship between CDA Collaborative and its partner organizations, Grace told the audience that these must be rooted in asking questions to be led by contextually grounded knowledge. While Vahe recognized the difficulty of changing funding culture, he explained that Peace Direct tries to push back on donors rather than communities, by shifting the funding model and transforming partnership reporting. Both Grace and Vahe insisted on redefining who is the expert and co-authoring with community members. Grace and Vahe also recognized the existing push backs around the term decolonization, and explained that it is sometimes more efficient to use other words such as localization with donors.

A conclusion that emerged from both panels was the importance of relationships in peacebuilding work and the necessity to enter into partnerships where learning and listening are central. 

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of PREP, Director Thomas Hill and Deputy Director Katerina Siira invited partners from Colombia and Libya to join a conversation on the global discourse on decolonization and localization. Malki Elkibir, the Peacebuilding Program Manager at Moomken in Libya, and Yessica Tatiana Motta Galindo, the VP of FUNRESURPAZ in Colombia, shared their insights and reflections on PREP’s largest and longest-running project to date: Municipal Leaders Building Peace: Understanding Locally-Led Impact in Conflict-Affected Countries.

Despite the decades-long discourse and global recognition for the need to localize and decolonize peacebuilding, human rights, and development work, a lot of what has been done is not effective, either perpetuating harm or not doing enough to mitigate the harmful legacies and structures of colonialism. For instance, Malik noted that while Libya has seen huge investment in the 12 years following the revolution, international donors haven’t asked what people need and are instead focusing on the wrong thing. International civil society and donors want to help Libya become a democracy, but they have neglected to think about or develop tools to prevent election violence that may happen during this transition. While the priority of local communities is to help Libyan people protect themselves from the violence surrounding the election, focusing on enhancing social cohesion to make communities strong, this has largely been overlooked by the international community. 

Yessica added her input on how participatory action research (PAR), an approach that is utilized by PREP and its partners, can help us to overcome the issues that Malik described. According to Yessica, PAR is “una metodología que apunta a la producción de un conocimiento propositivo y transformador mediante procesos de debate, de reflexión, y de construcción colectiva” – a methodology that aims at the production of purposeful and transformative knowledge through processes of debate, reflection, and collective construction. Through PAR, PREP and FUNRESURPAZ fully engages with the communities they are investigating, taking into account the realities of the community and the different views of all the local actors to allow for the possibility of “aprendizaje mutuo” – mutual learning –  that results in more effective interventions as well as the empowerment of the community. The purpose of this research is “se pone al servicio de la comunidad y con esto ayudará a resolver sus problemas y necesidades y por supuesto a poder planificar sus proyectos futuros,” – to put it at the service of the community and with this it will help to solve their problems and needs and of course to be able to plan their future projects. 

Finally, both Yessica and Malik reflected on the role of international partners, specifically universities, in localization and decolonization. Malik stated that “the role of the university now is to change the routine of our way of thinking,” and shared how Moomken’s partnership with PREP had introduced the organization to PAR and encouraged them to work with more diverse local actors, rather than actors they already knew, in order to create sustainable peace. Yessica shared that the key role of international university researchers is to embrace, engage, and comprehend the reality of each community so that they can start to transform and disrupt the power hierarchies together.

Rewatch this important conversation on Youtube.

80% of Black trans and queer youth are depressed, 43% are harassed in schools, and less than 25% report receiving positive messages about their identities in school. While it is important to talk about the harm and violence that Black trans and queer youth face, Dr. Shamari K Reid reminds us that it is dangerous to present their lives solely as tragedies that are characterized by victimhood. We need to invert the narratives around marginalized groups and start to think about them as “people with agency, who have insight, and who know a lot about worldmaking, who know a lot about peace, who know a lot about love, and a lot about joy.” 

An Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU Steinhardt, Dr. Reid’s work explores how Black trans and queer youth and their communities sustain themselves amidst the oppression and violence. He studies NYC ballroom culture, a space where Black and Brown queer and trans folk have built a world where they are not just accepted, but affirmed and loved for being themselves.

Dr. Reid asks: What can traditional educators learn from this space? How can they transform schools into sites of equitable opportunities for Black LGBTQ+ youth? 

He has recently published two articles - “Using a Queer of Color Critique to work toward a Black LGBTQ+ inclusive K-12 Curriculum” and “Exploring the Agency of Black LGBTQ+ Youth in Schools and in NYC’s Ballroom Culture,” and - in which he “translates” what he has witnessed from ballroom culture and offers guidance for educators on how to make schools more warm and welcoming for Black trans and queer students. 

When asked about his definition of peace, Dr. Reid responded, “being able to wake up and go throughout your day in your full authenticity, as your full self and not having any fear about what might not happen to you.” Although this is not true right now in education for young Black queer and trans folk, he hopes that his work will push us all to construct places and spaces that are more peaceful for them. 

Watch the event here!

Vijayta Narang, an alumna of NYU SPS's Global Affairs M.Sc. program, returned to Woolworth to speak about her experience working at CIV:LAB, an innovative grant-making network that channels funds and resources directly to community climate initiatives. She presented on CIV:LAB’s recent initiatives, including The Grid, the NYC Response Lab, and the Climate:Lab. Vijayta also discussed how she has applied peacebuilding theory and principles in climate action funding – a context that does not conventionally intersect with the field. 

CIV:LAB’s core mandate is to act as bridge builders in the urban tech and innovation space in New York City. Vijayata discovered that much of CIV:LAB’s work was, unintentionally and unknowingly, rooted in peacebuilding theory. In her work as Program Director, she recognized elements of Lederach’s web theory –  which emphasizes understanding social geography, finding the location of intersections, and being “smart flexible” – and his yeast theory, which asks who, rather than how many, it takes to start a movement.

If you missed this exciting conversation, you can watch it here!

Organizers from Red Hook Initiative’s (RHI) Public Safety Team joined PREP to kick off this year’s seminar series: Peacebuilding in Our City.

Obi Afriye, a Public Safety Organizer at RHI, and An Doc, a member of the public safety team, provided an overview of the origins and goals of RHI’s Public Safety Program and shared their personal opinions on what a safe Red Hook would look like. They reflected on how our perception of public safety is influenced by our identity and encouraged seminar participants to consider what or who makes them feel safe, or unsafe, and why.

You can read more about RHI’s Public Safety program here, and check out their ethnography project cataloging organizers’ perceptions of public safety here.

Back from their Workshop in Applied Peacebuilding summer consultancies, MSGA students Anjali Tallapragada, Pia Madanes Quintanilla, and Stevie Robinson gathered at the Center for Global Affairs to discuss their experiences working with local organizations in Uganda, Jordan, and Sri Lanka. They reflected on their role as outsiders and the challenges they faced as international peacebuilders.

The student conversation was followed by a panel of professional peacebuilding practitioners that included Liz Hume, the Executive Director of Alliance for Peacebuilding, Isabella Cuomo, the Executive Director at Build A Movement, and Eyako Heh, a Senior Research Specialist at Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative. Liz, Isabella, and Eyako joined PREP Director Thomas Hill to continue the discussion on the tension between domestic and international peacebuilding and offer their unique perspectives on the challenges of peacebuilding work in the United States.

If you missed it, watch the event here!

Approximately two dozen alumni of the Workshop in Applied Peacebuilding returned to The Woolworth Building for a day of reflection and celebration of the end of the popular course’s first decade. Marcus Lenzen, Senior Adviser and Deputy Chief of the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, offered a keynote address.

As part of PREP and PACT’s seminar series on peacebuilding and mental health MSGA Alumna Julie Meier joined a live audience at The Woolworth Building via Zoom to speak about her work managing mental health and psychosocial support programs for the International Organization for Migration in Iraq.

PREP Director Thomas Hill gave a virtual presentation to a global audience convened by CETYS University in Mexicali, Mexico, intended to mark the International Day of Peace. He spoke about the importance of universities not only as academic spaces for the study of peace, but as influential institutional actors that can engage constructively with their surrounding communities to help build peace.

During PREP's first in-person event in more than 17 months, MSGA students Nikki Stoumen and Nada Elrhalami joined Professor Thomas Hill for a discussion about their summer experiences working as graduate student consultants for peacebuilding organizations in Iraq and Tunisia. They spoke about being part of the first wave of practitioners returning to international fieldwork as the COVID-19 pandemic began to subside as well as the challenges of entering a new world characterized by a blend of both in-person and remote peacebuilding work.

PREP Director Thomas Hill, Project Director Katerina Siira and MSGA Alumna Marta Bautista Forcada addressed an audience convened by the Colombian Studies Initiative at the NYU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Universidad de Rosario in Bogota. They spoke about the participatory action research that MSGA students have undertaken in Colombia through a partnership with the Escuela Superior de Administración Publica. They also reflected on the challenges of building equitable academic partnerships that draw on endogenous peacebuilding capacities as well as the successes of the collaboration with the Colombian students, who have transformed themselves from a student research group into an autonomous research organization known as FUNRESURPAZ.

Please join us for a panel discussion with peacebuilding practitioners who will address shifts in the peacebuilding field since March growing out of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the global movement to combat racism. The panel will include: Graeme Simpson, Director of Interpeace USA, Carlos Polanco, Activist and Community Builder and MSGA students Jillian Abballe and Trevor Johnson, who completed this past spring's Workshop in Applied Peacebuilding and have undertaken projects with international peacebuilding organizations. Professor Thomas Hill, director of the Peace Research and Education Program (PREP), will moderate the discussion. The event is co-sponsored by PREP and the Peace and Conflict Transformation student club.