By Anne de Graaf
We're back! It's June, so Peace Lab Kosovo has another 20 students learning Balkan history--Monday was the exam and Tuesday we flew to Prishtine. I'm the instructor of Peace Lab, a qualitative research methods fieldwork class where we learn about peacebuilding, peacemaking and peacekeeping. We place ourselves under the authority of local peacebuilders in order to understand better how to heal deeply divided societies, which, as I say in the talk attached below, we all sort-of come from these days.
We have another great group of students this year. They have backgrounds from The Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Thailand, Switzerland, Iceland, Bosnia, India, Denmark, Lithuania, Ireland, Belgium, Hungary and the U.S. We're learning about interview techniques, identifying themes and most important, how to (shut up and) listen.
The students are all working on projects that explore the role of various peacebuilding tools such as food, music, sports (yay Euros!) and graffiti.
Sometimes people ask what is this peacebuilding? Especially with what's happening in Ukraine, Gaza, the DRC, South Sudan, Yemen and to the Armenians last autumn (the list goes on), there is growing interest in peace studies, as opposed to war studies. I've pasted below the TEDx talk I gave a few months ago where I explain peace in more detail and my own research into how young people contribute to sustainable peace.
Please sign up to follow our blog and join the journey of our students as they become inspired by the great-hearted people here in Kosovo, the non-member state of the EU at the heart of Europe. This year, since 1 January, Kosovo (finally) has visa liberalisation. Look how the Newborn (state) monument in Prishtine has been transformed to picture all the countries people can travel to now. And that's peacebuilding: the transformation of a society not to what it was before the conflict, but into something even more inclusive.
Each day students will post their impressions here, so please do come along with us on this new adventure.
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