Change is sweet

By Anne de Graaf

Welcome to the last Peace Lab Kosovo class. I'm the instructor of this very special qualitative research methods fieldwork class. Because of different financial priorities there is no longer money in the Amsterdam University College (AUC) budget for a trip to Kosovo. So in its 10th year, this class is meeting for the last time. Students said learning about peacebuilding needed to happen, which means we're meeting in Amsterdam and zooming with partners in Kosovo. They said a non-travel class was better than nothing. So here we are. We'll visit the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague next week and we've already had some exciting in-person Peacebuilding workshops with peacebuilders from around the world. Last week was about learning Balkan history. This week is about listening to peacebuilders from the Albanian and Serbian communities.

Still, it's hard to not take this latest group to the place we've been learning about during the last 10 days. I try not to dwell on how much more meaningful the class is when we travel, and instead I focus on this great group of students--my last Peace Lab class since I will be leaving AUC in December.

So it's a season of change. And already we are hearing from people in Kosovo that these are dark times. They feel there is no political will and with all the other crises in the world, what's happening in the Western Balkans doesn't seem to be a priority for the international community (whoever they are).

Different perspectives, deepening understanding, the courage of peacebuilders--these are all themes arising in this month-long course about peacebuilding, peacekeeping and peacemaking. Students this year have backgrounds from Russia, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, Ireland, Romania, Poland, Portugal, the U.S., UK and Sweden. All these different backgrounds just enrich the class even more.

Please join us as we travel (virtually) through Kosovo and discover our own peacebuilder journeys. There will be daily blogposts by the students. What does it mean to set aside being right and make a deeper understanding the top priority? How can we shut up and listen? How many different perspectives can we collect? Every year this class changes me and changes the students in it. Perhaps it will change you, too. Thank you!