Practicum in Peacebuilding
(curso en inglés)

This is a fieldwork practicum course that explores peacebuilding through a social transformation lens. Students will explore some of the ways peacebuilding is experienced in Colombia, a country that has witnessed the longest internal violent conflict of the western hemisphere. Peacebuilding in Colombia has been approached in two fundamental ways: one of these ways is top-down, as many attempts to negotiate peace agreements have emanated from institutional attempts to negotiate peace with illegal groups, including the successful peace agreements of 2016 between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Another way is the ongoing peacebuilding practices that happen at the community level. This is a type of peacebuilding that develops organically and creatively as conflicts escalate; in this case, communities come together to respond peacefully to the effects of war that disrupts their personal and social lives. This course explores these two approaches both theoretically and empirically.

During this course, students will engage with peacebuilding actors in the field, listen to their stories, and collectively map out the dynamics leading and sustaining peacebuilding in their communities. NECR students will share the classrooms and field visits with students from the master’s program in peacebuilding at Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, allowing participants to have a rich local experience and to exchange knowledge and practice through cross-cultural perspectives. Lectures and some field visits will be accompanied by local experts, peace negotiators, and artists engaged with peacebuilding. Students will learn how to do fieldwork on peace and peacebuilding; they will assess the applicability of theories and methods such as Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM), Dynamical Systems Theory (DST), Systems Thinking approaches, and the ethnographic method, to resolving pressing local and world conflicts.