Join us on Thursday, 23 March at 10am ET for a ConnexUs Thursday Talk panel discussion, “Reconciliation: In Theory & In Practice,” featuring Thania Paffenholz, Executive Director, Inclusive Peace; John Paul Lederach, Professor Emeritus, University of Notre Dame & Senior Fellow, Humanity United; Andrei Gomez Suarez, Senior Fellow, Centre for Religion, Reconciliation and Peace, University of Winchester; & Friederike Bubenzer, Peacebuilding & Reconciliation practitioner. Join us as we launch the Reconciliation Thematic Action Area and approaches to reconciliation theory & practice.

Speakers:

• Thania Paffenholz, Executive Director, Inclusive Peace
• John Paul Lederach, Professor Emeritus, University of Notre Dame; Senior Fellow, Humanity United
• Andrei Gomez Suarez, Senior Fellow, Centre for Religion, Reconciliation and Peace, University of Winchester
• Friederike Bubenzer, Peacebuilding & Reconciliation practitioner

Recommended Resources:

• Reconciliation Thematic Action Area
• Mapping on Approaches to Reconciliation
• Insider Understandings of Reconciliation
• Colombia’s Truth, Coexistence and Non-Recurrence Commission: Innovations, Challenges and Opportunities
• Reconciliation In Practice: Selected observations about the assumptions informing practices of reconciliation

Do you have a resource on reconciliation to share? Post it on ConnexUs!

Speaker Bios:

Thania Paffenholz is an academic and a policy/practice advisor with roots in Africa and Europe, specializing in mediation and peacebuilding, peace process design, inclusion, participation, the conditions under which peace processes produce sustainable outcomes, as well as research-policy transfer. She has been involved in, advised on, and studied numerous peace and political transition processes around the world. Thania is Executive Director of Inclusive Peace; a Senior Fellow at the Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) at the Graduate Institute, Geneva; and Chief Field Editor of Frontiers in Political Science as well as Special Chief Editor of the same journal’s Section on Peace and Democracy.

Friederike Bubenzer is a South African peacebuilding practitioner. She is passionate about bringing people together to co-create solutions to social justice related challenges. Her extensive work in conflict-affected communities across Africa highlighted to her the urgent need to integrate mental health and psycho-social support (MHPSS) into peacebuilding and transitional justice processes. Recently she co-authored the UNDP guidance note on this topic. After 14 years with the Cape Town-based Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, Friederike is now working as an independent consultant, often from beautiful and remote places.

Andrei Gomez-Suarez is Colombian writer, international relations scholar, and peace practitioner, currently living in Oxford. He specialises in conflict resolution, peace negotiations, transitional justice, reconciliation and dialogue. Andrei is a Senior Fellow at Winchester University’s Centre for Religion, Reconciliation and Peace; the co-founder and non-director of peacebuilding organisation Rodeemos el Diálogo (ReD, Embrace Dialogue); an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Bristol; and a Senior Consultant at Positive Negatives.

John Paul Lederach is an American professor and practitioner and conflict resolution and transformation. He has been involved in reconciliation and peacebuilding work in numerous contexts, including Colombia, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, and Nepal, plus countries in East and West Africa. John Paul has helped design and conduct training programs in 25 countries across five continents. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Humanity United and Professor Emeritus of International Peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.