Dr. Gearoid Millar has won a small grant from the Independent Social Research Foundation to host a workshop on Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR) in July 2016 to bring together the international contributors to his forthcoming edited volume titled Ethnographic Peace Research: Strengths, Challenges, and Ethics.
Ethnographic Peace Research: Strengths, Challenges, and Ethics
University of Aberdeen
July, 2016
Workshop Abstract
This workshop is designed o initiate a research network focusing on Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR). The primary aim of the project is to bring together researchers already engaged in either conducting or critiquing this emerging sub-focus of the Peace and Conflict Studies literature to consolidate existing approaches into a consistent and rigorous methodology. The longer-term aim is to contribute both more accurate and nuanced evaluations of international peace interventions in post-conflict settings and locally pertinent policy recommendations for supra-national institutions and international non-governmental organizations active within such interventions (UN, EU, DfID, OECD, ICG, etc.).
The workshop, to be held in July 2016, will bring together 15 leading Peace Research scholars who are contributing chapters to a volume on EPR to be edited by the Dr. Gearoid Millar (of the University of Aberdeen) and submitted for publication in early 2017 (tentatively with Oxford University Press). This workshop will serve both as the final opportunity for critique and comment on each other’s papers, and as a forum for the design of future collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects through which the new EPR agenda will be implemented and its methodological guidelines further calibrated.
The various short, medium, and long-term outputs and outcomes to be hastened by this workshop have enormous potential to impact on the ongoing concern with “local ownership” and experiences of peace interventions within Peace and Conflict Studies. Primarily, the project will lead efforts to develop and disseminate new ethnographic approaches to assessing the local impact of international intervention. The workshop participants will, therefore, contributes directly to the development of new methods to evaluate and contribute to both international and local peace processes and to breaking down the disciplinary divides that have thus far hampered the contribution to such efforts made by both scholars and practitioners.