Applied Research & Practical Education

Our applied research and practical education programming aims to facilitate innovation and deeper learning at the intersection of peacebuilding and higher education to equip current and future leaders with the capacity to enhance levels of peacefulness

Iraq

Working with the University of Duhok, the University of Mosul, the University of Anbar and the University of Fallujah, PREP has helped to build academic excellence in peacebuilding through support of master's and bachelor's degree programs, diplomas and informal education for both faculty and students. When needed, PREP has helped to strengthen core university functions whose successful operations are a prerequisite to effective peacebuilding.

Strengthening Iraqi University Academic & Institutional Capacity

  • University of Duhok

    For more than a decade, PREP has worked with the UoD's Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies (CPCRS) to help situate CPCRS as a center of excellence and a service provider that offers high-caliber training, research and consultation on peacebuilding. UoD is the only university in Iraq with a degree-granting program in peace and conflict studies. PREP has helped to enhance the knowledge, teaching and research capacity of the faculty of UoD's Department of Peace and Human Rights Studies. 

  • University of Mosul

    PREP and CPCRS have worked together to build the University of Mosul's academic capacity in peace and conflict studies. In 2018, PREP and CPCRS collaborated to offer intensive courses to select UoM faculty members in conflict assessment, reconciliation, and mediation, and then oversaw a set of workshops on the same topics delivered by UoM faculty to their students.

  • University of Fallujah

    Since 2020, PREP has worked with partners at the University of Fallujah and the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education to build research and teaching capacity, as well as to begin an exploration of how peace and conflict studies might find an interdisciplinary home at the UoF.

  • University of Anbar

    PREP and CPCRS have collaborated on efforts to strengthen youth peacebuilding capacity at the University of Anbar. PREP has worked closely with a group of faculty members and students to develop peacebuilding knowledge and training capacity at the university.

Equipping Youth Peacebuilders

PREP and CPCRS worked together to deliver more than 200 Community-based Peace Education workshops in 2014-17 that reached over 4000 young people in Duhok and Ninewa provinces. Since that time, PREP has helped to expand the capacities of young people to build peace in Duhok and Anbar provinces through efforts that included inter-generational conflict transformation simulation exercises and small grants programs that enabled youth to develop innovative peacebuilding projects in their communities.

Peacebuilding Research and Publications

Researchers from PREP and from UoD's CPCRS frequently collaborate to document local capacities for peace in northern Iraq and to share best practices in peacebuilding and institutional learning. PREP and CPCRS began cooperating in 2021 on a project that aimed to document short-term outcomes of the UoD’s Department of Peace Studies and Human Rights following the graduation of its first two cohorts of students.

Check out our publications

Peacebuilding Diplomas for Refugees

PREP and CPCRS have offered two joint Diploma in Peacebuilding programs to residents of the Domiz Camp for Syrian Refugees. Delivered in a blended format that incorporated in-person lectures as well as remote classes on Facebook, the diploma programs prepared participants for work opportunities with international and local NGOs, enhancing both their social and economic standing as well as levels of peacefulness in their community. 

Colombia

Research exchange

in the territories

in pursuit of reconciliation

The historic 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP ended decades of violent conflict, PREP has partnered with the Colombian Truth Commission and the Escuela Superior de Administración Pública (ESAP), Colombia's national public administration school, to help support their roles as implementers of the agreement. PREP also works closely with FUNRESURPAZ, an Algeciras-based group that carries out peace-focused participatory action research in some of Colombia’s rural territories most affected by violence.

ESAP

In early 2019, four students from the Master of Science in Global Affairs (MSGA) Program traveled to Algeciras, Colombia to conduct research with the ESAP research group RESURPAZ about perceptions of the post-2016 reparations process from the perspective of four different groups of stakeholders. The published collection of work can be read here and a copy of the book can be purchased here.

Later in 2019, five ESAP students and one professor came to NYU for a three-week Joint Research Seminar in Peacebuilding and worked with five MSGA students and two faculty members. After developing joint research proposals focused on the peace process in Chaparral, Colombia, the 10 students and one faculty member  traveled there for a three-week research field visit. Publication of the joint research has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and is forthcoming.

FUNRESURPAZ

PREP and FUNRESURPAZ have developed a deep relationship rooted in the shared belief that peace is built at the local level. To that end, PREP has supported and accompanied FUNRESURPAZ’s efforts to strengthen social cohesion and resilience to violence in Algeciras since its first collaboration in 2018. Since then, the two have worked to share knowledge on technical research and organizational administrative capacities. The group has developed into one of the key peacebuilding actors in Algeciras.

FUNRESURPAZ and PREP are currently partnering on a two-year project that aims to 1) generate knowledge on how municipal leaders understand the impact of locally-led peacebuilding work, 2) create a framework for peace researchers to conduct similar research in other parts of the world, and 3) shape how international donors can more effectively support global south-north partnerships.

Learn more about the work of FUNRESURPAZ on its website or in the recently published chapter on the group’s conflict transformation education work, authored by PREP’s Thomas Hill and Katerina Siira and MSGA alumna Rosalie Fransen.

Truth Commission

PREP supports the work of the Commission in the Central Andean region to uncover the history of the armed internal conflict and promote reconciliation. Most recently, PREP facilitated collaboration between MSGA students, University of Tolima students and the Commission in Planadas, Tolima to capture the rich history of peacebuilding in the community where indigenous groups signed the first ever Peace Agreement with the FARC-EP. Social dialogues, and community-wide arts and sports events informed a process of memorialization documented in a cartilla, co-produced by NYU and Tolima students. The dissemination of private sector, social and institutional actors’ reflections seeks to support the Comission’s efforts to promote reconciliation and coexistence beyond the of the Commission’s mandate, which is nearing a close.

ON THE RADIO!

PREP's Katerina Siira and ESAP Professor María Victoria Whittingham talk about their work with students on peace research projects in Chaparral on Colombia’s National Radio. These projects looked at what local actors do to make societies more peaceful rather than just focusing on conflict, and emphasized local people as Peacebuilders.

 

Kuwait

ESTABLISHING A PEACE UNIVERSITY

Integrating peace education into technical disciplines

PREP is supporting the soon-to-be established Al Salaam University — the first university to teach law, business, education and engineering through the lens of peacebuilding — in program and curriculum development, and staff training. With the aim of ensuring that Kuwait’s future lawyers, engineers, educators and business people will practice their professionals more peacefully, Al Salaam University represents a new direction at the nexus of higher education and peacebuilding that could serve as a model for other universities in the Middle East and beyond.

Libya

DEEPENING UNDERSTANDINGS OF MUNICIPAL-LEVEL PEACE

DEVELOPING PEACE AND CONFLICT ASSESSMENTS IN LIBYAN MUNICIPALITIES

PREP has partnered with the Tripoli-based NGO Moomken to develop a series of Peace and Conflict Assessment studies in 16 Libyan municipalities. PREP conducted a remote training program for Moomken’s research team about how to carry out a participatory approach modeled after the Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts method. The research outcomes will help municipalities prioritize programs and policies that lead to increased peacefulness across Libya.

GENERATING KNOWLEDGE ON HOW MUNICIPAL LEADERS EVALUATE THE IMPACT OF LOCAL PEACEBUILDING

PREP began to work with Moomken in late 2021 on a participatory research project that aims to build and apply a framework that will increase understanding of what actually constitutes impactful peacebuilding at the local level. The project will enhance Moomken’s qualitative research competencies, ability to monitor and evaluate peace and human rights-focused work in Libya, and to produce knowledge within its community that will inform global approaches to human rights and social change work.

NYU CGA

The peacebuilding concentration within the MS in Global Affairs (MSGA) program helps students to develop theoretical understanding and practical skills that are demanded by international and domestic organizations engaged in peacebuilding and related fields. Students who concentrate in peacebuilding have the opportunity to take skill-building courses such as: Conflict Assessment; Mediation Skills for Global Affairs, and; the Workshop in Applied Peacebuilding. PREP seminars and public events connect MSGA students and the CGA community to leading practitioners and the latest discourses within the peacebuilding field. 

MSGA Peacebuilding Concentration

BUILDING KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF PEACEBUILDERS

  • Workshop in Applied Peacebuilding

    PROVIDING PRACTICAL FIELD-BASED PEACEBUILDING WORK EXPERIENCE

    The Workshop in Applied Peacebuilding, taught every spring semester by PREP director Dr. Thomas Hill, links students in the MSGA program with professional peacebuilding organizations. Students design and develop proposed projects in the classroom at CGA in close collaboration with PREP partner organizations during the spring semester; during the summer, students implement the projects in the field.

    Since 2011, 123 MSGA students have developed and implemented peacebuilding projects with international organizations and local NGOs in Afghanistan, Brazil, Burundi, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Liberia, Libya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Panama, Rwanda, Somalia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste, Uganda, and the United States.

  • Joint Research Seminar in Peacebuilding

    CREATING COLLABORATIVE PEACE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES

    The two-course sequence has paired MSGA students with local researchers in Iraq and Colombia. The first of two courses teaches peace research methodologies and serves as a laboratory for development of joint research proposals; during the second course, NYU students work in the field with their local counterparts to generate data and carry out their proposed projects. The course provides students and their counterparts with experience conducting partiicipatory peace research in the field. It also fosters learning and intercultural connections between students in New York and abroad, and provides participants with opportunities to publish original research.

    Check out Finding Peace in Iraq: Joint Field Research on New Approaches to Peacebuilding in the Kurdistan Region Volume 1 & Volume 2.

    Check it out

Workshop in Applied Peacebuilding Alumni Reflections

  • PREP STUDENT PEACE RESEARCH AWARD

    PREP is conducting its 2023 Student Peace Research Award competition. Entries, which must have been written during the 2022-23 academic year, must be submitted by June 15. Entries must be submitted via email to peacebuilding@nyu.edu. The winner will be announced in July.

    Oceane Hooks-Camilleri won the inaugural PREP Student Peace Research Award in 2021 for her paper entitled, “Creating a Common Language: Peacebuilding & Corporations." Her paper explored the question of how peacebuilding and corporate actors could learn to communicate and collaborate more effectively around a common set of understandings and concepts. No award was presented in 2022.

Watch Océane's Presentation Here