Contributors
Amya Agarwal is a lecturer of International Relations at the University of Sheffield, UK. Prior to moving to the UK, she was a senior researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, Freiburg, Germany (2021–2023) and a postdoctoral fellow in Duisburg, Germany (2019–2021). She received her PhD from the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, India in 2017. In the past, she has held teaching positions in the University of Delhi, South Asian University, University of Freiburg and University College Freiburg. Amya’s research lies at the intersection of gender, conflict and security. In particular, she studies and writes about masculinities, motherhood, art and aesthetics in times of violence and resistance.
Dr. Nijmeh Ali is a Fellow at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS), University of Otago. Her research focuses on resistance and activism within oppressed groups, particularly among Palestinian activists in Israel. Her research provides a critical perspective on studying resistance and revolution in non-western societies and challenges the classic liberal framework of citizenship. It also deals with exposing strategies used by oppressed and marginalised groups in resisting their subjugation; therefore, it applies to women, minorities, refugees, and migrants. Dr. Ali provides political consultancy on Middle East politics, and migration and refugee policies.
Mahdis Azarmandi is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Studies and Leadership at the University of Canterbury, where she also serves as the co-coordinator for the Bachelor of Youth and Community Leadership program. After earning her PhD from the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, she held a position as Assistant Professor at DePauw University. Additionally, she has taught in Germany and Denmark. Her research focuses on addressing the notable absence of race in peace and conflict studies, alongside examining the interplay between colonization, imperialism, and white supremacy in the context of peace and violence.
Her current research extends beyond peace and conflict studies, encompassing abolition and the envisioning of a war-free world, with a focus on confronting the structural violence of capitalism, racism, and militarization to dismantle oppressive systems. In addition to her work on peace and conflict studies, she also works on the politics of memorialization in Spain and Aotearoa New Zealand. Her scholarly works delve into resistance to monuments and uncover the colonial inscriptions embedded within urban landscapes. She is one of the editors of the book Decolonize the City! Zur Kolonialität der Stadt – Gespräche | Aushandlungen | Perspektiven.
Franziska Bergert studies Liberal Arts and Sciences at University College Freiburg, majoring in Culture and History. She is particularly interested in International and Intellectual History.
On: “Nefertiti“
Zine
Karina A. Bidaseca is Senior Researcher (at CONICET, Argentina) and a guest researcher at the Center for African Studies (CEAUP), University of Porto, Portugal and at the Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain. She is a Professor in EIDAES at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín and also in the faculty of social sciences at Universidad de Buenos Aires. She is a Curator in Visual Arts and a writer at the UNTREF and writer. She coordinates the SUR SUR Program at CLACSO and the project Sea Poetics/Southern Voices & Transatlantic Dialogues. World Platform for Descolonializing Arts & Cosmopolitics- SudART and the School for Decolonial Artivisms from the South (Buenos Aires, 2022- UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, 2024). She founded and co-directs the NuSur Nucleus (South-South Postcolonial Studies, Performative, Afrodiasporic Identities and Feminisms) UNSAM.
Manuela Boatcă is a Professor of Sociology and Head of School of the Global Studies Programme at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She has a degree in English and German languages and literatures and a PhD in sociology.
She has published widely on world-systems analysis, decolonial perspectives on global inequalities, gender and citizenship in modernity/coloniality, and the geopolitics of knowledge in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In 2018 she was awarded an ACLS collaborative fellowship alongside literary scholar Anca Parvulescu, for a comparative project on inter-imperiality in Transylvania. The resulting co-authored book, titled “Creolizing the Modern. Transylvania Across Empires” will be published published in English, German, and Romanian.
Layla D. Brown is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology & Africana Studies and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Layla’s research focuses on Pan-African, Socialist, and Feminist social movements in Venezuela, the US, and the broader African Diaspora. She is working on completing her first book manuscript entitled An Anthropology of Pan-Africanism in the 21st Century, an ethnographic exploration of the rise of Pan-African/Feminist activism and social movements in Venezuela and the United States. Layla is also the co-host of a new podcast, “Life. Study. Revolution.” with Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly.
Claudia Brunner is a social scientist and Associate Professor at the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. In her habilitation (2019) at the University of Vienna’s department of Political Science, she developed a transdisciplinary concept of epistemic violence, the research for which was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (2015-2020). The resulting book Epistemische Gewalt. Wissen und Herrschaft in der kolonialen Moderne is available online, as are further publications in German and English at www.epistemicviolence.info. For previous work, she received academic awards issued by Humboldt-University in Berlin (2012) and by the German Association of Peace and Conflict Studies (2011).
Copyright to the picture: © photo riccio, klagenfurt
Entry: “Epistemic Violence”
Natália Bueno is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra. She is currently working on the project “REINTEGRA: Reviewing the Impact of Amnesty in the Reintegration of Ex-Combatants: A Bottom-Up View of the Case of Mozambique,” which is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). Her research interests include transitional justice, reconciliation, peacebuilding, colonial and liberation wars, memory and, most recently, knowledge production. She is the author of several articles and book chapters on these topics, as well as the book “Reconciliation Operationalized in Mozambique: Charting Inclusion, Truth and Justice, 1992–2022.”
Podcast: “Postcolonial Europes“
Selbi Durdiyeva is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Conflict Studies, Philipps University Marburg, working on ‘Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict’ project. She obtained her PhD at Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University, Northern Ireland. Her PhD focused on reimagining the role of civil society in transitional justice processes in Russia with respect to Soviet repression. She is a former Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability (AHDA) Fellow, which took place at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University (2021-2022). She also worked as a research assistant at Nottingham Law School’s UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project. She has an LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from the University of Essex. Previously, she worked as an adjunct lecturer and Legal Clinic Coordinator at the School of Law at KIMEP University, Kazakhstan and as the Child Rights International Network researcher.
Gelila Enbaye is a Research Associate at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, where she works on peace and security policy. She contributes to the Stabilization Lab project where she co-developed a simulation game designed to analyze political economy dynamics in conflict settings. Currently, Gelila is working on African perspectives on stabilization policy and conflict management as part of this project.
As a 2024 Think Tank School fellow, Gelila is exploring the potential of futures-thinking in peace mediation through her personal policy project. Her insights and commentary have been featured in Tagesspiegel, Africa is a Country, and Zeit Online.
Gelila holds a dual master’s degree in International Security and International Relations from Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Mannheim.
Entry: “Futures-Thinking“
Katherine Esponda Contreras is a specialist in Culture of Peace and International Humanitarian Law. She combines university teaching with applied research, community work, and support for educational and social institutions. She has led interdisciplinary projects in areas such as ethics of responsibility and human action, feminicide and intersectionality, as well as historical memory and transitional justice. She is a CLACSO fellow and co-researcher in initiatives aimed at the Sustainable Development Goals, in partnership with national and international universities. Her most recent research focuses on the role of women in the salsa dance scene in Cali, and she is currently doing a research project on female leadership and caregiving experiences in women’s community organizations in northern Cauca, Colombia.
Entry: “Feminicide in Abya Yala“
Firoozeh Farvardin is a University Assistant in the area of Gender and Politics at the University of Vienna’s Institute of Political Science, whose multidisciplinary teaching and research focuses mainly on gender (counter)strategies within authoritarian neoliberalism, particularly in the Global South. She completed her doctoral studies on the historical transformation of state and gender and family politics in contemporary Iran at Humboldt University of Berlin and is also an associate fellow with the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies (IRGAC) at the University of Potsdam, as well as an affiliated gender politics expert with the MERGE (Middle East Research Project), at Humboldt University of Berlin.
Garrett FitzGerald is an Assistant Professor of Peace & Justice Studies at Pace University. Garrett’s research broadly focuses on the politics of knowledge production in the field of peacebuilding, and draws on resources from decolonial, Indigenous, and Black feminist theory to interrogate persistent exclusions in peacebuilding theory and practice. Recent publications can be found in in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Democratic Theory, and a forthcoming volume on critical feminist approaches to Peace Studies. His current research focuses on abolitionist approaches to peacebuilding; developing an intersectional approach to the concept of environmental violence that is gaining traction in peacebuilding literature; and in developing place-based approaches to teaching, researching, and practicing peace and justice work in New York City, where he lives and works.
Entry: “Pluriversal Peacebuilding“
María Belén Garrido is the director of the Regional Institute for the Study and Practice of Strategic Nonviolent Action in the Americas (Estudio y la Práctica de la Acción Noviolenta Estratégica en las Américas), a visiting professor at FLACSO Ecuador and part of the research group on Peace and Conflict at the same institution. She holds a PhD from the Catholic University of Eichstätt/Ingolstadt, a Master’s degree in Peace Studies and a BA in Sociology with a specialisation in Social Sciences applied to International Relations. Her area of expertise and publications Peace and Conflict with a special focus on civil resistance movements in contexts of armed conflict and hybrid democracies. She has facilitated trainings on peace education, nonviolent communication, mediation, conflict resolution and civil resistance actions. In 2023 she received the Isabel Tobar Guarderas prize for the best work published in Ecuador in the field of social sciences.
Entry: “Sumak Kawsay“
Gabriel Garroum is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Research Group in International Public Law and International Relations at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). Moreover, he is an external faculty member in the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI). His areas of teaching include International Relations Theory, Contemporary International Relations, and Conflict and Security.
He holds PhD in War Studies from King’s College London (2021, under the supervision of Prof. Vivienne Jabri, and a Master’s in Middle East Politics from SOAS (2014). He is a Fellow of SEPAD (Lancaster University) and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center of Beirut and the Harmoon Centre for Contemporary Studies.
His interdisciplinary research combines qualitative and aesthetic methodologies and has recently focused on the relationships between practices of violence and power, space, and political subjectivities, particularly in Syria. In addition, he is especially interested in exploring the potential of using critical social and political theory to address the international politics of the Middle East. He is co-author of Això Era Casa Meva/This Was My Home (2019), a documentary on the Syrian Civil War (Available at Filmin). Upcoming book: The Urbicide of Syria: A Postcolonial Understanding of the Civil War (Manchester University Press, July 2025).
Entry: “Urbicide“
Iván Garzón Mayorga is a visual artist graduated from the Visual Arts program at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogota. He wrote, produced and directed the feature film “LO PEOR HASTA EL MOMENTO”, which was part of the International Festival of Cartagena de Indias (Ficci) in 2023. He works as an audiovisual producer, illustrator and motion graphics animator with his company Furio Visual.
Report & Policy Paper: “Movilización, Resistencias y Memoria Popular” & “Mobilisation, Resistance and Popular Memory“
F. Richard Georgi is postdoctoral researcher at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and research associate at the Max Planck Research Group ‘Multiplication of Authority’. He is currently involved in two research projects, on the violence of building peace and ‘prepping’ as activism for in-/security. In his PhD dissertation, he studied the political activism of human rights defenders amidst the deferred promise of peace and violent realities in post-accord Colombia. His research is dedicated to listening to lived experiences in order to find ways out of the academic trenches that scholars like to build on subjects like human rights, activism and social mobilisation, conflict studies, and the transformations of capitalism.
Andréa Gill is a professor of the Political Science Department of the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences (IFCS) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – Brazil (UFRJ), in the Sector of International Politics and Decoloniality. Associate researcher of the Interdisciplinary Center for African Descendent Research and Heritage (NIREMA) and of the Global South Unit of Mediation (GSUM) of the BRICS Policy Center (BPC) of the Institute of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Member of the Fiscal Council of the Directorship of the Brazilian Association of International Relations (ABRI), as well as the Commission for Evaluation of Affirmative Action Politics and Vice-Coordination of the Thematic Area of Teaching, Research and Community Extension of the National Association. Editor of the book review section of the Sexualities Journal published by SAGE. Areas of research: postcolonial and decolonial studies; race, gender, sexuality, and class relations; urban politics; violence and conflict; international relations and globalisation; political economy and development; education; Latin American and Brazilian social and political thought. Her formation consists of a Bachelor’s in Social and Political Thought from Western University (UWO-Canada) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN-South Africa), and a Master’s and Doctorate in Political Science, with a specialisation in Cultural, Social and Political Thought, from the University of Victoria (UVIC-Canada).
Entry: “Systems of Conflictivity“
Juliana González Villamizar is a researcher and doctoral candidate at the Chair of Peace Studies at Justus-Liebig University in Gießen. Philosopher from the National University of Colombia with a master’s degree in Political Theory from Goethe University Frankfurt. Previously, she worked as researcher and consultant at CAPAZ Institute in Colombia and accompanied the work of the Colombian Truth Commission. Juliana’s research focuses on transitional justice, memory politics and peacebuilding from feminist, intersectional and decolonial perspectives, and aims to build ethical solidarity among activist and knowledge-production networks. She is co-editor of Comisiones de la verdad y género en países del sur global. Miradas decoloniales, retrospectivas y prospectivas de la justicia transicional (Universidad de los Andes/Instituto CAPAZ, 2021) and author/co-author of recent articles on the mainstreaming of intersectionality in the Colombian peace process: Feminist intersectional activism in the Colombian Truth Commission: constructing counter-hegemonic narratives of the armed conflict in the Colombian Caribbean (2023); The Promise and Perils of Mainstreaming Intersectionality in the Colombian Peace Process (2021); Arhuaco Indigenous Women’s Memories and the Colombian Truth Commission: Methodological Gaps and Political Tensions (2021). Her research received the Herbert Stolzenberg Award from Gießen University (2022).
Entry: “Intersectionality“
Paul Gready is Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York (UK), co-editor of the Journal of Human Rights Practice, and holds a UNESCO Chair focusing on the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Expansion of Political Space. He has published widely on transitional and transformative justice, including From Transitional to Transformative Justice, edited with Simon Robins (CUP), and the monograph, The Era of Transitional Justice: The Aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and Beyond (Routledge). He has also published on the arts and human rights, human rights cities, universities as sites of activism and protection, and human rights practice.
Entry: “Transformative Justice“
José A. Gutiérrez is a sociologist with an anthropological background, and lecturer at the Centre for Applied Human Rights and the Department of Politics at the University of York. His work, focused particularly in rural settings, explores the intersections between conflict studies, human rights and peace studies. He has actively participated in transitional justice initiatives in Colombia, including peace negotiations and historical memory initiatives. He has published widely on the issue of conflict and on peace-building, including Justicia Transformativa y Conflicto Agrario. Elementos para un Debate Necesario (co-authored with Eric Hoddy and Dáire McGill, Ediciones USTA 2023) and the upcoming Transitional Justice and Agrarian Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan).
Entry: “Transformative Justice“
Abraham Hand Vargas Mencer is pursuing a doctor’s degree in Fundamental Rights and Guarantees at the Faculty of Law of Vitória (Brazil). He holds a master degree in Fundamental Rights and Guarantees at the Faculty of Law of Vitória and a specialization in Constitutional Law from the Brazilian Academy of Constitutional Law and serves as a director at the Brazilian Academy of Human Rights. Additionally, he is a practicing lawyer and used to be a legal advisor to a local municipal parliamentarian. His research interests include democracy, constitutional philosophy, and legal theory, explored through decolonial frameworks.
Miriam Haverkamp is currently finishing her Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University College Freiburg. Throughout her studies, she took courses from a variety of disciplines, including cultural anthropology, sociology and history, and is mainly interested in topics related to social inequality, namely postcolonial and queer history. She us especially interested in the way knowledge can be transmitted in nonacademic and artistic ways, and wants to become a documentary filmmaker after finishing her studies.
Roberta Holanda Maschietto is a research associate at the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies (CCP/NUPRI) of the University of São Paulo. She holds a PhD in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford and was a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES, Portugal, 2017-2023) and at the Institute of Public Policies and International Relations (IPPRI) at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) (2023-2024). Her research interests include: peacebuilding and local empowerment in Mozambique and Timor-Leste; peace, violence and the youth in Brazil; human security, memory and Covid-19 in the Brazilian peripheries; peace and democracy; peace studies and knowledge production in the Global South. She is member of the Research Network on Peace, Conflicts and Critical Security Studies (PCECS) in Brazil and cofounder of the Global South Peace & Conflict Studies Network. Proud mom of Nina, she has experienced the challenging yet rewarding balance between research activities and motherhood.
Martina Jakubchik-Paloheimo: Department of Geography and Planning, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.
Shuar Kakaram de Buena Esperanza: This is the collective name to represent the intellectual contributions and leadership from the advisory committee in the community of Buena Esperanza. The names of the individuals in the photo have temporarily been removed to protect community and participant safety.
Entry: “Shuar Geographies of Peace“
Maria Ketzmerick-Calandrino (she/her), is an IR scholar focusing on peace, conflict, and security. Currently, she works as postdoctoral researcher in the project CRAFTE at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) Berlin. Before joining ZMO, she was a lecturer at the Chair for Sociology of Africa and Principal Investigator in the Hierarchies Network at the University of Bayreuth. Her research focuses on topics within post/decolonial and postsocialist security research, historical and sociological international relations, and (global) peace and conflict research. In doing so, she wants to contribute to an understanding of the ambivalent and complex interrelationships between locally rooted social dynamics, transnational politics, and global change. Empirically, she is interested in situations in which (social) orders are subject to constant (re)negotiation and the question of how these orders are embedded in historical interdependencies in a globalized context. These situations are embedded in dynamics within decolonization, and the Global Cold War, and stretch to contemporary social conflicts.
Rabea is a lecturer in International Relations at Liverpool John Moores University. Her primary research interests lie in the critical study of terrorism, religion, and counter-terrorism. She approaches the ‘critical’ study of these concepts and ideas through post- and decolonial as well as abolitionist approaches and is also interested in how categories like race and gender have shaped and encoded various concepts central to international security discourses and practices. Rabea is the current co-convenor of the BISA Critical Terrorism Studies working group and the co-editor of an upcoming special issue on ‘Abolition, Decoloniality and Criticality’ which seeks to radically re-think the project of Critical Terrorism Studies. Rabea’s most recent work has been published in Review of International Studies, Critical Research on Religion, Critical Studies on Terrorism and International Studies Quarterly. She is currently working on her first monograph entitled the ‘The colonial Myth of Religious Terrorism’.
Saloni Lakhia (she/her) is an independent researcher and Rotary Peace Fellow with an academic background in law and peace & conflict studies. Her grassroots level work with survivors of gender-based violence and sexual assault across the state of Maharashtra has informed state and national policies on women security and empowerment. Her research, shaped by her experience as a Rotary Peace Fellow and socio-legal practitioner, lies at the intersection of gender, law, and conflict from a postcolonial lens.
Richard Legay is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Göttingen, an Associate Member at the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut, and a Teaching Fellow at University College Freiburg. A historian by training, he works at the intersection of media, memory, and colonial history. He recently received a Media Studies Grant from the International Federation for Television Archives to study transnational narratives on restitution in audiovisual archives, as well as funding from the University of Freiburg for a tandem project, ‘Restitution beyond the Objects’ with Rebecca Ohene-Asah (UniMAC, Ghana) and Zainab Musa Shallangwa (University of Maiduguri, Nigeria). He received his PhD from the University of Luxembourg in 2020, where he studied the transnational history of commercial radio in Europe in the 1960s.
Intervention: “Can Europe come to terms with its colonial past?“
Paola Lozada is a doctoral candidate in International Studies at FLACSO Ecuador. She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and a specialist diploma in International Cooperation. She is also Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and Lecturer at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. At the beginning of her career, she worked with NGOs in numerous projects with indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian communities on issues of conflict resolution and human rights, with young people on issues of leadership and peace, as well as training for mediators. She later joined the public sector where she was in charge of cooperation and international relations of several institutions related to productive issues, customs and cooperation. She is currently part of the organising committee of the Regional Programme for the Study and Practice of Strategic Nonviolent Action in the Americas (Programa Regional para el Estudio y la Prática de Acción Noviolenta Estratégica en las Américas). Her research focuses mainly on conflict resolution and peace studies. In 2021 she received a Dolores Cacuango award for the best essay in LASA’s Ecuadorian Studies section.
Entry: “Sumak Kawsay“
Betty Ruth Lozano is a sociologist with a master’s degree in political philosophy and a PhD in Latin American cultural studies. She is an activist of a black, anti-racist and popular feminism. Since the early 1990s she has been interested in experiences of multiple oppressions that converge in black women and has published about this since 1992. Based on her experience working with female victims of gender-based violence under the armed conflict in Buenaventura, Colombia, she has focused on violence against racialized women related to the expansion of neoliberal capitalism in the Colombian Pacific region. She researches the violence exercised against women within organizations of the social movements. She is the founder of several women’s collectives and accompanies the organizational processes of women in popular sectors. She was the manager and general coordinator of the International Forum on Femicides in Ethnic/Racialized Groups held in Buenaventura in 2016.
Julie Mackensen is a Liberal Arts and Sciences student at the University College Freiburg, majoring in Environmental and Sustainability Sciences. Her main research interests include decolonial perspectives such as environmental justice, political ecology and coloniality of nature. She engages with creative design and mixed media and likes to explore the use of alternative formats to convey academic and cultural knowledge.
Barbara Magalhães Teixeira is a a peace and conflict scholar and educator. Her research touches on issues of nature, peace, and development, with a focus on environmental conflicts and the socio-ecological transition. Building on feminist and decolonial commitments, Barbara’s work is oriented toward fostering liberatory peace for people and planet.
In 2024, she defended her PhD thesis “The Nature of Peace and the Continuum of Violence in Environmental Conflicts” at Lund University, Sweden.
Cheyenne Moeser studies Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University College Freiburg. Majoring in “Culture and History”, she is interested in the development and interconnections of cultures across time and regions. She is especially drawn to topics concerning gender and media culture studies and wishes to pursue a master’s degree in either area after completing her bachelor’s.
Zine: “Restitution: NO[W]!“
Godefroid Muzalia Kihangu is Professor at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique (ISP) in Bukavu, Director of the Centre de Recherche Universitaire du Kivu (CERUKI), co-founder and head of the Groupe d’Études sur les Conflits et la Sécurité Humaine (GEC-SH) as well as co-founder of the Congolese Network for Research on Peace and Security (ResCongo). Godefroid is closely involved in collaborative research. His research focuses on security governance and post-conflict reconstruction in the DRC. He focuses on armed groups dynamics and their impact on rural landscape changes.
Jephta U. Nguherimo is a reparation activist, poet and a former professional labor negotiator of Herero-descent based in Washington D.C. Jephta Nguherimo has been instrumental in the reparation movement for the OvaHerero and Nama genocides, over the last three decades. He was the co-founder of the OvaHerero, Ovambanderu, and Nama Genocide Institute in the US. He organized conferences and other platforms that eventually forced the German government to confront and acknowledge the Genocide of 1904-08.
Sarah Njeri is a lecturer in Humanitarianism and Development at the Global Development Studies Department, SOAS, University of London. She is a peace and conflict scholar with degrees in conflict resolution and peace studies from the University of Bradford’s Peace Studies Department. Her research is inherently interdisciplinary and combines different methodological approaches that foregrounds empirical investigations and local knowledge. Her research sits at the intersection between academia, policy and practice. She applies a critical lens to research and in doing so challenges prevailing approaches to implementation modalities of humanitarian, development and post conflict peacebuilding programs especially within the subsector of Mine Action.
She is the co-editor of Global Activism and Humanitarian Disarmament published by Palgrave, Macmillan; a book that analyses the politics of the humanitarian disarmament community – who have successfully achieved international treaties banning landmines, cluster munitions and nuclear weapons, as well as restricting the global arms trade. She has also published widely. See link for a full list of her publication; Sarah also sits on the Board of Trustees for the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) and also is a member of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association board (Africa Regional Director).
Diana Ojeda is a Colombian geographer who combines feminist political ecology, critical agrarian studies and political geography in the analysis of the relations between dispossession and environmental crises. She is particularly interested in land and water grabbing, and the forms of environmental and territorial defense that contest them. Diana is Professor in the Department of Geography and the Department of International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, where she also directs the Ostrom Workshop’s Commons Program.
Swati Parashar is a Professor of Peace and Development at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her teaching and research have led to academic appointments and fellowships in India, Singapore, the UK, the US, Ireland, Australia, and Sweden. She has also taught at the University of Rwanda in Kigali and at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. Swati is a member of the Swedish Development Research Network and has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of SIDA. Her research interests include feminism, postcolonialism, research methodologies, gender-based violence, famines, and development in South Asia and East Africa. She has published numerous journal special issues, articles, policy papers, and popular media pieces. In 2025, she will be honored as the Distinguished Scholar of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section at the ISA Convention in Chicago.
Ana Carolina Pasolini Gonring is a law student at the Faculdade de Direito de Vitória (FDV), Brasil, who began engaging with scientific research through her published article “Economic Power as a Factor of (In)Effectiveness of Law: The Samarco Crime-Disaster Through the Lens of Critical Legal Theory”. She is currently a scientific initiation scholar funded by FAPES, researching topics that connect environmental law and its Latin American approach with the impact of coloniality on memory and interpretation.
Christina Pauls is a doctoral researcher currently focusing on peace understandings and post-/decolonial memory activism. She works at the Chair of Political Science, Peace and Conflict Research at the University of Augsburg in the research network Conflicts.Meanings.Transitions. In that context, she is coordinating the ‘Transferzentrum Frieden’ in the city of Augsburg. She is also a consultant for nonviolent conflict transformation, facilitator for reflections critical of domination and educator for peace, remembrance and colonialism. During her studies in Passau, Kigali, Washington, D.C., and Innsbruck, Christina has researched about genocide, guilt and victimization in the African Great Lakes Region and transgenerational traumatization of minorities in the former Soviet Union.
Dr. Filiberto Penados is a Co-Founder of CELA Belize and a Maya scholar whose work focuses on indigenous education and development. Dr. Penados has a long history of engaged scholarship with indigenous and local communities in Belize and a wealth of experience leveraging this involvement to create unique learning experiences.
Dr Penados has served as a professor at the University of Manitoba, University of Toronto, Galen University, and the University of Belize. He teaches courses on Sustainable Development, Natural Resource Management, and Education, and related fields. He also loves to play the guitar.
Laura Quintana is a Colombian philosopher and writer with a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She is a full professor in the Department of Philosophy at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). Her work focuses on reflecting on the political conditions of the present—particularly the aesthetic dimension of forms of power and emancipation and their effects on the world—through a dialogue between philosophical approaches and contemporary anthropological perspectives, crossed by experimentation with literary, audiovisual, and ethnographic languages. Among her books are: Política de los cuerpos (Barcelona: Herder, 2020), which was translated into English and published by Rowman & Littlefield in the series Reinventing Critical Theory; Rabia: afectos, violencia, inmunidad (Barcelona: Herder, 2021); Esos afectos voraces (Tusquets, 2022); Espacios afectivos (Herder, 2023); and El tiempo que queda (Ariel, 2025).
Copyright to the picture: © Natalia Espinosa
Paula Rodríguez is a graphic designer, community manager and audiovisual producer. She currently works at Preciosa Media, an audiovisual distribution company where she is content curator, community manager and webmaster.
She is also part of FURIO, audiovisual agency, where she works as audiovisual producer of different film and audiovisual projects.
Report & Policy Paper: “Movilización, Resistencias y Memoria Popular” & “Mobilisation, Resistance and Popular Memory“
Jan Yasin Sunca obtained a joint Ph.D. degree from Bielefeld University (Germany) and Ghent University (Belgium). His work intersects international historical sociology, revolutionary politics, radical and decolonial political theory, and conflict analysis/transformation with a geographical focus on West Asia. Previously, he advised European institutions and NGOs on the relations between the EU, Turkey and the Kurds. Currently, he conducts a research project on stateless decolonisation.
Entry: “Inter-subaltern Hierarchies“
Nicanor Tatchim holds a PhD in political communication and media studies from the Université Paris-Est Créteil.
He is qualified as a Maitre de Conférences (71st section, France) and is a research associate at the Laboratoire Gériico of the University of Lille and at Céditec (University of Paris-Est Créteil). His research interests include communication policies and devices in relation to postcolonial and decolonial issues, ethnicity and plurivocality in organizational discourse, the media and cultural industries.
He has recently published, among other books and scientific articles: Diversité et communication interculturelle en postcolonie. L’État au Cameroun face au problème anglophone (2023, Paris, L’Harmattan); “Radio Voice and Political Resistance in Postcolonial Africa. The
example of Cameroon”, Journal of Radio & Audio Media (2025); ‘The (re)construction of the memory of slavery and the slave trade: Bimbia in Cameroon between silence, rehabilitation, and cultural dialogue’, Journal of Black Studies (2025); ‘La valeur politique et sociale de la musique: crise anglophone, plateformes numériques et musique dissidente au Cameroun’, Volume ! Revue française des musiques populaires (2023); “The ‘’Anglophone crisis” in Cameroon: cultural diversity as governmentality of (post)colonial divide”. Journal of Ethnic and Diversity Studies (2024).
The Tribunal Popular in Siloé is a collective effort for alternative and popular justice, formed by victims and survivors of police violence, their relatives, and allied human rights organisations and activists. It was born in response to state repression in the neighbourhoods of Cali’s Community 20, also known as Siloé, during the National Social Uprising of 2021 in Cali, Colombia. The tribunal responds to the need for clarification, truth and justice, comprehensive reparation and non-repetition for those who suffered police and state violence.
- Abelardo Aranda Velasco, Tribunal Popular en Siloé, Cali, Colombia, tribunalpopularsiloe@gmail.com
- José Benito Garzón Montenegro,Universidad del Valle – Tribunal Popular en Siloé, Cali, Colombia, jose.b.garzon@correounivalle.edu.co
- Ana Marrugo Gómez, Universidad de Pittsburgh – Tribunal Popular en Siloé, Pittsburgh, Estados Unidos, anamarrugo@pitt.edu
- María Italia Pérez Rengifo, Tribunal Popular en Siloé, Cali, Colombia, perezmaritalia@gmail.com
- Sara Vásquez Rodríguez, Tribunal Popular en Siloé, Cali, Colombia, sara.vasquez@correounivalle.edu.co
Entry: “Justice from below“
Siddharth Tripathi is a Senior Research Fellow at University of Erfurt where he leads the project on Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict. His primary interest lies in postcolonial and decolonial perspectives in IR and peace and conflict studies especially on epistemic and structural hierarchies that exist in the discipline. He received his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. As part of his research at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels, he has conducted extensive field research in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Berlin and Brussels. He edited the Rowman and Littlefield Handbook on Peace and Conflict Studies: Perspectives from the Global South(s) which is a collaborative endeavour of scholars from the Global North and the Global South.
(Un)Stiching gazes an interdisciplinary collective of reflection, research and praxis, which tells and collects stories of peace and encounters in Colombia, especially after the signing of the 2016 Peace Agreement. They do so through textile narrative, that is to say through threads, needles and fabrics. This is their manifesto:
“We have been saturated with death and pain, but we have also survived. We saw the war very close, it has been in the daily lives of all of us. Today we do something to reinvent history, we meet and talk, that gives us hope, it lets us know that there is something to do and that we can go ahead and do it. … We understand what has happened getting to know each other, living together, remembering that our lives deserve to be lived. This is our country, this is our history. Have been on a suspension bridge, today we process our own and the other’s, we have our debts, debts of justice, debts of indifference. Today we listen to different stories, we texturize politics with knots and threads. We allow ourselves this embrace of understanding, recovering humanized looks, without discarding conflict and difference.”
- Beatriz Elena Arias López, Seamstress, PhD Community Mental Health, Principal Investigator in Colombia. University of Antioquia, Faculty of Nursing. beatriz.arias@udea.edu.co
- Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, PhD in International Politics, Senior Researcher in the UK. Aberystwyth University, Department of International Politics. beb14@aber.ac.uk
- Berena Patricia Torres Marín, PhD Social Anthropology, Co-researcher. Universidad de Antioquia, Faculty of Nursing. berena.torres@udea.edu.co
- Martha Rendón Herrera, Historian, Co-investigator. University of Antioquia, School of Nursing. hadaluz17@gmail.com
- Laura Antonia Coral Velásquez, Plastic Artist, Co-investigator. University of Antioquia, School of Nursing. lauraantoniacoralvelasquez@gmail.com
- Christine Andrä, PhD International Politics, Postdoctoral student. Aberystwyth University, Department of International Politics.
- Camila Londoño Román. Spanish Philologist. Co-researcher. University of Antioquia, Faculty of Nursing. camila.londonor@udea.edu.co
- María Teresa Buitrago Echeverri. Weaver, PhD Public Health, Co-investigator, Mtbuitragoe@gmail.com
Artworks
Gerlov van Engelenhoven is an assistant professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). His research concerns postcolonial memory and heritage, law and culture, and cultural interaction. His research methodology combines participatory research with discourse analysis and (auto)ethnography.
He received his PhD Summa Cum Laude from the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany.
His most recent book is titled Postcolonial Memory in the Netherlands: Meaningful Voices, Meaningful Silences, and was published in open access by Amsterdam University Press in 2023.
From 2024 to 2028, he runs a research project called Listening to Silence: Silence as Empowerment in Contemporary Dutch Postcolonial Memory. It is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) through a Veni-grant (Talent Program). In this project, he interviews decolonial activists, curators and artists who actively use silence in their practice. The outcome will be a new book, a podcast, live events with performances and exhibitions, and an edited volume with international contributors.
Podcast: “Postcolonial Europes“
Koen Vlassenroot is a Professor of Political Science at Ghent University, where he is the director of the Conflict Research Group. He investigates armed groups and civil war. His main contribution in the field of development studies and peace and conflict research is the understanding of the social embeddedness of rurally based armed groups, the mobility of combatants, public authority and non-state forms of governance in conflict zones, the social transformations induced by long-term conflict and DDR processes. He is one of the in initiators of the Bukavu Series, a series of blog posts discussing ethical challenges of conflict research and the positionnality of research collaborators in the Global South.
Siddharth Tripathi is a Senior Research Fellow at University of Erfurt where he leads the project on Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict. His primary interest lies in postcolonial and decolonial perspectives in IR and peace and conflict studies especially on epistemic and structural hierarchies that exist in the discipline. He received his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. As part of his research at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels, he has conducted extensive field research in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Berlin and Brussels. He edited the Rowman and Littlefield Handbook on Peace and Conflict Studies: Perspectives from the Global South(s) which is a collaborative endeavour of scholars from the Global North and the Global South.
(Un)Stiching gazes an interdisciplinary collective of reflection, research and praxis, which tells and collects stories of peace and encounters in Colombia, especially after the signing of the 2016 Peace Agreement. They do so through textile narrative, that is to say through threads, needles and fabrics. This is their manifesto:
“We have been saturated with death and pain, but we have also survived. We saw the war very close, it has been in the daily lives of all of us. Today we do something to reinvent history, we meet and talk, that gives us hope, it lets us know that there is something to do and that we can go ahead and do it. … We understand what has happened getting to know each other, living together, remembering that our lives deserve to be lived. This is our country, this is our history. Have been on a suspension bridge, today we process our own and the other’s, we have our debts, debts of justice, debts of indifference. Today we listen to different stories, we texturize politics with knots and threads. We allow ourselves this embrace of understanding, recovering humanized looks, without discarding conflict and difference.”
- Beatriz Elena Arias López, Seamstress, PhD Community Mental Health, Principal Investigator in Colombia. University of Antioquia, Faculty of Nursing. beatriz.arias@udea.edu.co
- Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, PhD in International Politics, Senior Researcher in the UK. Aberystwyth University, Department of International Politics. beb14@aber.ac.uk
- Berena Patricia Torres Marín, PhD Social Anthropology, Co-researcher. Universidad de Antioquia, Faculty of Nursing. berena.torres@udea.edu.co
- Martha Rendón Herrera, Historian, Co-investigator. University of Antioquia, School of Nursing. hadaluz17@gmail.com
- Laura Antonia Coral Velásquez, Plastic Artist, Co-investigator. University of Antioquia, School of Nursing. lauraantoniacoralvelasquez@gmail.com
- Christine Andrä, PhD International Politics, Postdoctoral student. Aberystwyth University, Department of International Politics.
- Camila Londoño Román. Spanish Philologist. Co-researcher. University of Antioquia, Faculty of Nursing. camila.londonor@udea.edu.co
- María Teresa Buitrago Echeverri. Weaver, PhD Public Health, Co-investigator, Mtbuitragoe@gmail.com
Artworks
Gerlov van Engelenhoven is an assistant professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). His research concerns postcolonial memory and heritage, law and culture, and cultural interaction. His research methodology combines participatory research with discourse analysis and (auto)ethnography.
He received his PhD Summa Cum Laude from the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany.
His most recent book is titled Postcolonial Memory in the Netherlands: Meaningful Voices, Meaningful Silences, and was published in open access by Amsterdam University Press in 2023.
From 2024 to 2028, he runs a research project called Listening to Silence: Silence as Empowerment in Contemporary Dutch Postcolonial Memory. It is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) through a Veni-grant (Talent Program). In this project, he interviews decolonial activists, curators and artists who actively use silence in their practice. The outcome will be a new book, a podcast, live events with performances and exhibitions, and an edited volume with international contributors.
Podcast: “Postcolonial Europes“
Koen Vlassenroot is a Professor of Political Science at Ghent University, where he is the director of the Conflict Research Group. He investigates armed groups and civil war. His main contribution in the field of development studies and peace and conflict research is the understanding of the social embeddedness of rurally based armed groups, the mobility of combatants, public authority and non-state forms of governance in conflict zones, the social transformations induced by long-term conflict and DDR processes. He is one of the in initiators of the Bukavu Series, a series of blog posts discussing ethical challenges of conflict research and the positionnality of research collaborators in the Global South.
Dr. Dina Wahba is a senior researcher at the Arnold Bergstrassser Institute. She is a political scientist working at the intersection of gender, affect, and politics in the Middle East and Europe. Her work focuses on militarized masculinities, environmental activism, and the affective dimensions of state power and resistance.
She holds a PhD from Freie Universität Berlin and has taught widely on gender, media, and international politics.
Intervention: “Sudan“
