List of Programs and Projects
Better Evidence Project
The problems of war and violence urgently require the concerted efforts of donors, policy makers, practitioners, and scholars in the peacebuilding community. In order to best address the humanitarian catastrophe of war, these efforts must be guided by informed understandings of what works effectively to prevent wars and resolve conflict. The Better Evidence Project (BEP) seeks to improve the evidence available to donors, policy makers, practitioners, and scholars in the peacebuilding community, thus strengthening our collective efforts to address the problems of war and violence.
Principle Faculty
Jeff Helsing, Executive Director
Dialogue and Difference Project
The Carter School’s Dialogue and Difference Project brings students, faculty, staff, and community members together to discuss current controversial and important issues.
Associated faculty
- Patricia Maulden
Experiential Learning Project
Linking Theory to Practice: Conflict Analysis and Resolution Pedagogy builds the capacity of the interdisciplinary field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (CAR) to play a key role in improving undergraduates’ ability to apply theory to practice in CAR courses, in general education, and beyond the classroom. The project consists of three initiatives in curricular innovation, each involving development, testing, and dissemination:
- Initiative 1: Design introductory course materials in CAR, particularly experiential learning activities suitable for general education.
- Initiative 2: Create a model for intensive service learning activities in domestic and international contexts.
- Initiative 3: Promote best practices in designing CAR curricula to enhance students’ ability to link theory and practice, including models for strengthening partnerships between two- and four-year institutions and better aligning curricula across those institutions.
Through wide dissemination of curricular materials, approaches, models, and best practices, the project is designed to have significant, positive sustainable impact on educators and institutions locally, regionally, and nationally.
Principle Faculty
- Susan Hirsch
- Agnieszka Paczynska
Insight Conflict Resolution Program (ICRP)
The ICRP seeks strategies to transform the social and cultural conflicts that: divide communities; create barriers to opportunity; and perpetuate social and economic injustice.
People often make decisions based on information that's filled with perceptual and factual errors. Because they feel threatened, they aren't open to new ideas, which makes it hard to learn and change. Insight practice tries to defuse those perceived threats, giving people the opportunity to question their beliefs and decisions, which can direct them toward a peaceful solution in tense situations.
Areas of interest include:
Associated faculty
- Jamie Price, Founding Director of ICRP and Research Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution
John Mitchell, Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race
The John Mitchell, Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race was founded to engage local state and national partners in peacebuilding and conflict resolution by studying the ways in which historical memories are foundational to political and social identity in America.
Associated faculty
- Charles Chavis, Director
Methods Mondays
The Carter School Methods Mondays series of online research methodology seminars is an initiative of students and faculty in the Research Committee. The seminars are designed to offer graduate students exposure to multiple research methods in the field of peace and conflict resolution.
Principle Faculty
Parents of the Field of Peace and Conflict Studies
This project was conceived to visually record the recollections and views of scholars and practitioners who initiated the field of conflict analysis and peace research. Professor Emeritus Christopher Mitchell and late Carter School graduate Johannes (Jannie) Botes (University of Baltimore) conceived of and undertook the work of visiting, recording, and curating the memories and wisdom of an ever-growing index of luminaries associated with the genesis of our field.
The product of their labor, produced with assistance from the Carter School, the University of Baltimore, and a Hewlitt Foundation grant, is an archive of nearly 40 scholars, practitioners, and theorists whose work has shaped our nascent discipline since the 1950s. Interviews conducted over several years across the globe have been transcribed, lightly edited, and made available for public use via our website. Each interview stands as a unique resource in itself, but as a collection, the Parents of the Field project is an unparalleled historical document; it chronicles the development of a new scholarly approach to social problems, one centered not around disciplinary pillars but a commitment to practical, constructive change.
In addition to a description of the project, you can also find a complete list of interviewees on our site.
Associated faculty
- Christopher Mitchell, Professor Emeritus
- Jannie Botes
- Paul Snodgrass
Project on Contentious Politics (PCP)
The PCP is an interdisciplinary group of scholars seeking to understand contentious political movements that involve actors, processes, or goals that are outside the realm of everyday politics. These movements include:
- Strikes
- Civil rights activities
- Human rights violations
- Stolen elections
- People’s power movements
- Coup attempts
- Ethnic riots
- Civil wars
- Revolutions
- Genocides
The PCP organizes workshops, hosts lectures and discussions, and seeks to advance the work of scholars and graduate students working on these questions.
Topics of discussions include:
- Historical roots of contemporary armed conflict
- Conducting fieldwork in challenging environments
- Censorship in post-Mubarak Egypt
- Election violence in Africa
Associated faculty
- Thomas Flores, Co-Director of PCP and Assistant Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution
- Terrence Lyons, Co-Director of PCP and Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution
- Agnieszka Paczynska, Co-Director of PCP and Associate Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Program on History, Memory, and Conflict
The Program on History, Memory, and Conflict engages in research, education, and practice concerning the production and reproduction of history and memory in conflict and transitioning societies. The aim of the Program is to analyze the main mechanisms, stakeholders, and media through which collective memory and historical narratives are created, disseminated and impacts society and to identify possible models and develop programs for conflict resolution, democracy building, and restoration of justice.
Principle Faculty
Karina Korostelina
Raphaël Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program (GPP)
Located at the Center for Peacemaking Practice in the Carter School at George Mason University, the Genocide Prevention Program (GPP) was founded to engage United Nations Member States and other regional and sub-regional organizations in building a network of states and local communities committed to preventing genocide and mass atrocities. GPP supports state policies and practices directed towards atrocity prevention, promotes genocide education and strategic training initiatives, and helps to build grassroots networks across the world that are committed to ending mass violence and mass atrocities.
Principle Faculty
- Doug Irvin-Erickson
Urban Peacebuilding
The program in Urban Peacebuilding will leverage interdisciplinary research and practice to support efforts to prevent and respond to violence in urban areas and to bolster innovative approaches to peacebuilding. Connecting community members, academics, policymakers and practitioners from various fields, the program will focus on creating cutting-edge, community-based learning experiences that support communities in building on their knowledge and creative potential to more effectively influence social change. The program on Urban Peacebuilding will work to lay the groundwork for more integrated and dynamic city-wide peacebuilding models.
Principle Faculty