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 in Iraq, Colombia and New York City.
Our Work in Iraq
Working with the University of Duhok (UoD) and University of Mosul (UoM) in Iraq, PREP facilitates cooperation between the two largest public universities in a region characterized by complex intercommunal relationships and contemporary political discord. PREP has helped to build academic excellence in peacebuilding through support of master's and bachelor's and degree programs, diplomas and informal education, as well as the strengthening of relationships between groups that sometimes have been divided along ethnic, religious and political lines. PREP also has begun working with faculty at Al Anbar University in Ramadi to strengthen capacity for youth-led peacebuilding.
STRENGTHENING UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC AND INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY
PREP has worked extensively 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 with a degree-granting program on peace and conflict studies in Iraq. PREP has helped to enhance the knowledge, teaching and research capacity of the faculty of UoD's Department of Peace Studies and Human Rights.
More recently, 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.
EQUIPPING YOUTH PEACEBUILDERS IN DUHOK AND NINEWA GOVERNORATES
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. PREP and CPCRS continued in 2018 to expand the capacities of young people to build peace in their communities through informal peace education programs focused on communications and advocacy and peacebuilding project planning, and by facilitating innovative conflict transformation simulation exercises. PREP and CPCRS has provided small grants to youth participants in these programs to develop peacebuilding projects that are equipping young people in Duhok and Ninewa to become agents of positive social change.
PEACEBUILDING DIPLOMAS FOR SYRIAN REFUGEES
PREP and CPCRS twice have teamed up to deliver a Joint Diploma in Peacebuilding. Consisting of four blended-learning courses such as Mediation, Conflict Assessment and Communications for the Peacebuilding Professional, the diploma aimed to prepare residents in the Domiz Camp for Syrian Refugees for work opportunities with international and local NGOs so that they could both improve their own economic and social standing and so that they could contribute to increased levels of peacefulness in their community.
PEACEBUILDING RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS
PREP research scientists and and affiliate researchers from UoD's Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution studies colloborate to document local capacities for peace in northern Iraq and to share best practices in peacebuilding and institutional learning.
Our Work in Colombia
The historic peace agreement signed in 2016 by the Colombian government and the FARC-EP ended decades of violent conflict. In light of this historic moment, PREP has partnered with the Escuela Superior de Administración Pública (ESAP), Colombia's national public administration school, to help support its role as an implementer of the peace agreement.
RESEARCH EXCHANGE IN THE TERRITORIES
With a particular focus on Colombia's rural territories, PREP and ESAP are working together to foster exchange of peacebuilding knowledge and cooperation on action research by students and faculty of both institutions. In January 2019, four students from the Master of Science in Global Affairs Program traveled to Algeciras, Colombia to conduct research with the ESAP research group REDSURPAZ about perceptions of the post-2016 reparations process from the perspective of four different groups of stakeholders. Publication of the joint research is planned for mid-2019.
Discussions are underway for development of a joint PREP-ESAP blended learning program that will support the growth of entrepreneurship for peace in some of Colombia’s rural territories that have been most affected by violence.
Our Work in Kuwait
INTEGRATING PEACE EDUCATION INTO TECHNICAL DISCIPLINES
PREP is supporting soon-to-be established Al Salaam University — the first university to teach law, business and engineering through the lens of peacebuilding — in program and curriculum development, and staff training. With the aim of ensuring that the region’s future lawyers, engineers and business people will practice their professionals more peacefully, PREP will work closely with Al Salaam University's Center for Peace Studies, which will be responsible for setting the curriculum for all of the university’s departments and ensuring that its faculty and staff will be well-versed in peacebuilding concepts in addition to their respective specializations.
Al Salaam University received its certification from Kuwait’s Private Universities’ Council in late 2018, and will be developing its academic programs, management systems and physical campus throughout 2019.
MSGA Peacebuilding Concentration
BUILDING KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF PEACEBUILDERS
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 organizations engaged in peacebuilding and related fields. PREP seminars and public events connect MSGA students and the CGA community to leading practitioners and the latest discourses within the peacebuilding field.
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 partner organizations during the spring semester; during the summer, students implement the projects in the field.
Since 2011, 80 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, Liberia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Panama, Rwanda, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste, Uganda, and the United States.
Hear from former students about their experiences in the field
Joint Research Seminar in Peacebuilding
CREATING COLLABORATIVE PEACE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES
The two-course sequence Joint Research Seminar in Peacebuilding and Advanced Joint Research Seminar in Peacebuilding has paired MSGA students with local researchers in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Colombia. The first of two courses teaches peace research methodologies and serves as a laboratory for development of research proposals; during the second course, MSGA students work in the field with their local counterparts to generate data and carry out their proposed projects. The course offers students and their counterparts with experience conducting 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.
