A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear Friend

Dr. Linda Johnston, President

We would like to dedicate this issue of the newsletter to one of those people who have given so much to the success of the IPRA Foundation.  We particularly want to remember the many years that our colleague and friend, Chad Alger, served as the Vice-President of the IPRA Foundation as well as the Secretary General of IPRA.  We all miss his wise counsel and expertise.

Please keep the IPRA Foundation in your giving plans this holiday season. You can make a contribution directly from this Newsletter (see the “Support the IPRA Foundation sidebar.) We use all the donations we receive to fund Peace Research Grants and the Senesh Fellowship. Please have a look at our website to see the growing list of all the projects and research we have funded.

This year, for the first time, we awarded two Senesh Fellowships. Members of the IPRA Foundation Board were able to meet one of the scholars in person, as Lydia Wanja Gitau from Kenya, was able to attend the recent IPRA Conference in Istanbul, Turkey. We are very proud of the work she is doing.Our other scholar also from Kenya, Mary Thamari Odhiambo, is proceeding well with the work on her Ph.D. program. We hope to meet her in person at a future time.

When we look at the wonderful work our scholars have produced, we can all be proud that we had a hand in helping them achieve their goals. When you have a minute, look at the impressive list of Fellows and their work: https://iprafoundation.org/senesh-fellowship/.

 

Our Peace Research Grants program has been very active this year. We have awarded four Peace Research Grants and are very excited about the work these scholars are doing to promote peace in the world. As our program grows in both the number of applicants and in the scope of work our scholars are doing in the field, we are faced with a “wonderful” problem. We receive a lot of grant applications and try to fund as many worthy applicants as we can. Our review team works hard to bring forward the excellent research currently being done.

 

 

Linda M. Johnston, President

 

IN MEMORIAM:
CHADWICK FAIRFAX ALGER 1924-2014

Vice President, International Peace Research
      Association Foundation (IPRAF) Board

 

      of Directors 2008-2014
President, International Studies Association (ISA)
      1978-1979

 

Secretary General, International Peace Research
Association (IPRA) 1983-87

Chad Alger was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, October 9, 1924, and died in Columbus, Ohio, February 15, 2014.  He was one of the pioneers and “parents” of the field of peace research, and he has been honored for his career-long contribution to international relations scholarship.  He was a key figure in bridging an often wide gap between traditional international relations studies and the new ideas that became prevalent in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
 
Chad served in the WWII, and as a young man started to ask questions about why he and his generation had become involved in international conflict, and he became interested in working with the new organizations that were established at the end of the war to work with conflict in a more constructive way. He worked on the United Nations (UN) in the 1960’s by directly observing what went on in the General Assembly and elsewhere, focusing on who the movers and shakers were as well as who worked behind the scenes to see that the organization worked in spite of its many flaws.

Many individuals and organizations drew him further into the world of peace research.  Chad became an important part of the intellectual and institutional development of the field. He played a major role in the life of the International Peace Research Association and helped establish the Peace Studies Section of the International Studies Association. He made a unique contribution to peace and conflict studies with his work on the linkages that exist between local communities in distant ostensibly separate countries. His work on these foreign connections and thus the ‘foreign policies’ of cities was path breaking and pre-dated much of the interest in multi-track approaches to peacemaking by practitioners from the 1980’s onwards.

Chad joined the faculty of Ohio State University in 1971 as a Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, where he continued to teach and write for over 40 years. He had a quick wit and loved keeping meetings light and making people laugh. He served on the Board of Directors of the IPRA Foundation since its inception, bringing his vast experience, wisdom and good humor to all its deliberations. He is very greatly missed by the Foundation and by the entire Peace Research community. Read more about Chadwick Alger at: https://iprafoundation.org/chadwick-alger/.

To contribute in his name please visit our website at

https://iprafoundation.org/make-a-contribution/

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW
SENESH FELLOW for 2014-2015

 

 

Lydia Wanja Gitau

 

 

Lydia Wanja Gitau, of Kerugoya, Kenya, is the 13th recipient of the Senesh Graduate Fellowship for 2014-2015.  She is currently a PhD student at the University of Sydney in Peace and Conflict Studies, specializing in trauma intervention for survivors of mass violence.

 

Lydia has a Bachelor’s Degree in Education from Kenyatta University, Kenya, 1987-1990, a Master of Arts Degree in Counseling from NIST in Nairobi, Kenya, 1993-1995, a Diploma in Counseling Psychology from TEC Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, 2005-2006, and a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations from USIU in Nairobi, Kenya, 2008-2010.
 
Lydia’s doctoral research topic is “Trauma Interventions and Peacebuilding: A Case Study of South Sudanese Refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.”  In this she is examining the link between trauma healing and peacebuilding.  More broadly, she is interested in examining the post-conflict interventions that have potential to support long-lasting peace in the East Africa Region.
 

Upon completion of her doctoral degree, Lydia plans to be a practitioner in the area of peacebuilding in terms of offering psychosocial support for survivors of conflict, and teaching and training in peace and conflict issues.  She plans to extend her counseling skills to the context of trauma healing and recovery after mass violence.  She also plans to be involved in ongoing research to expand knowledge and help develop interventions that are conflict-sensitive, trauma-related and culturally-relevant to the conflict situations in the East Africa region.  She is particularly interested in exploring the subject of forgiveness and reconciliation after mass violence, and its practical application in specific conflict situations.

Read more about Lydia at https://iprafoundation.org/lydia-wanja-gitau/.

To contact Lydia Wanja Gitau, please send an email to info(at)iprafoundation(dot)org and we will gladly put you in contact.

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW
SENESH FELLOW for 2014-2015
Mary Thamari Odhiambo

Mary Thamari Odhiambo, of Nairobi, Kenya, is the 14th recipient of the Senesh Graduate Fellowship for 2014-2015.  She is currently a PhD student at the University of Birmingham in Africa Studies and Anthropology, Gender, Culture and Development. 

 

Mary has a Bachelor’s Degree in Education from Maseno University, Kenya, 1997-2001, and a Master of Arts Degree from Africa International University in Kenya. Her impressive employment history includes such projects as the Global Bag Project, County Girls Caucus where she is a founding director of a leadership and life skills development project for teenage girls in rural Kenya, and Africa by Design where she was able to organize a partnership between North American and Kenyan women for volunteer opportunities.

Originally from Kenya, Mary’s studies focus on gender issues in Kenyan marriage customs and their effects on community development in regard to women’s quest for socioeconomic growth. Through applied ethnographic research methods, she plans to study widow-inheritance and polygamy customs among the Luo of western Kenya. She will also research how these customs influence women’s fight against poverty. Her research will focus on aspects of culture and social dynamic that render women as more vulnerable members of households, especially in a context such as western Kenya, which has the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence in the country. While recognizing that community development requires efforts of both women and men, her research will explore links between gender relations in marriage contexts, as well as wider community peace-building efforts, and how it all influences overall community development.

After completion of her doctoral studies, Mary plans to widen her involvement through local governance as well as lecture at a university in Kenya where she plans to engage students on matters of development, including peace-building as a component of community development, and gender in the context of local customs.

Read more about Mary at https://iprafoundation.org/mary-odhiambo/.

To contact Mary Thamari Odhiambo, please send an email to info(at)iprafoundation(dot)org and we will gladly put you in contact.

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW PEACE RESEARCH GRANT RECIPIENT

 

 

Jogendro Singh Kshetrimayum

 

 

Jogendro Singh Kshetrimayum of India was granted this award inDecember, 2013, for his research project, titled “‘Collective Concern for Violent Death and Non-Violent Protest in the Midst of Armed Conflict in Manipur, Northeastern India.

The research seeks to understand the collective concern for violent death in the midst of the ‘undeclared war’ in Northeastern India, which is perhaps the longest ongoing armed conflict in South Asia.  Manipur, one of the states in the region, is deeply affected by the prolonged confrontation between the armed forces of the Indian state and the various separatist groups operating in the region. The region has seen intense militarization.
Certain forms of death, including death during childbirth, death by drowning, or death by any other unusual accident, are considered ‘violent’ or ‘abnormal’ in many parts of the world such that special funeral rites are performed for them. But what happens to the performance of the special funeral rites when crisis is the norm, as happens in cases of war, armed conflicts of long duration, epidemics, natural disasters, etc.? Can the challenges posed to the normative funeral practices trigger social responses that have practical implications for resolving the ongoing crisis? These are some of the larger questions this project seeks to explore and understand in the context of the ongoing armed conflict in Manipur, India.

 About Jogendro Singh Kshetrimayum

Jogendro is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Read more about the project at https://iprafoundation.org/jogendro-singh-kshetrimayum/.

To contact Jogendro, please send an email to info(at)iprafoundation(dot)org and we will gladly put you in contact.

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW PEACE RESEARCH GRANT RECIPIENT 
Emma Swan

Emma Swan, of Canada, was granted this award in June 2014 for her project titled “An Exploration into the Gendered Interpretation of Summud and Its Subsequest Manifestations in Palestinian Peacebuilding: Towards a Gender Inclusine Model of Peacebuilding.”
From a human security perspective, it is imperative to understand and place the individual, thus the local, at the centre of analysis.In appreciation of this, through an endeavor to explore gender and peacebuilding in Palestine, this research will incorporate and investigate the uniquely Palestinian concept of sumud. By including the interaction between the concept of sumud and gender in the study of peacebuilding in Palestine this study honors unique situational and cultural contexts.
Current literature on peacebuilding confirms increasing recognition of the ways in which experiences of conflict differ for women and men. Furthermore, it is well documented that women often face the most severe consequences during times of conflict and they are highly underrepresented in formal peacebuilding processes. As a result, there has been a dramatic increase in attention to the inclusion of women in these processes. This is often framed as ‘engendering peacebuilding’. However, to date, concepts of engendering peacebuilding, gender analysis, and gender mainstreaming most often equate the term gender with women. The treatment of gender as woman has led to a focus on the experiences, importance, and value of including women in peacebuilding. Although recognition of women’s agency in peacebuilding is crucial to success, there needs to be a complementing and equally in-depth exploration of men’s unique role in the same domain.
The intent of this study, then, is to analyze the gendered interpretation and manifestation of sumud and explore how gendered interpretation helps to better understand dynamics that influence Palestinian peacebuilding. Additionally, this research aims to explore the construction and assumptions of gender identities as they relate and contribute to peacebuilding in Palestine.
Emma Swan has completed her project and has submitted her excellent Final Report.
About Emma Swan
Emma Swan is currently the Director of the Women and Peace Program at the International Women’s Rights Project in Victoria, BC, Canada.
Read more about Emma’s project, including her final report, at  https://iprafoundation.org/emma-swan/.
To contact Emma, please send an email to info(at)iprafoundation(dot)org and we will gladly put you in contact.

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW PEACE RESEARCH GRANT RECIPIENT

 

 

Jude Cocodia

 

 

Jude Cocodia, of Nigeria, was granted this award in July 2014 for his research project, titled “‘The African Union as Peacekeeper: An Evaluation on Effective Peacekeeping.”

 

Peacekeeping has often been used to prevent conflict from degenerating further and the African Union, since its inception has been in the thick of this exercise. Providing security on a continent where conflict abounds and where belligerents are often non-state amorphous groups and the formal rules of engagement often do not apply is no easy task. This proliferation of nasty little wars which has characterized the post cold war era has often necessitated a robust approach to peacekeeping.
This project is a case study qualitative research which examines what peacekeeping requires to succeed and how the African Union has been able/unable to adapt to the role of the continent’s peacekeeper. The African Union serving as case study is influenced by the fact that it has the unenviable task of overseeing a region fraught with conflict, and of which to foster development on the African continent and improve the quality of life, the effective management of conflict is a foremost objective.
 

The official documents sourced from the UN would mainly be reports on the framework for peacekeeping, peacekeeping mandates, peacekeeping operations and resolutions of the UN Security Council and the General Assembly obtained from its website. Since the AU often seeks the permission of the UN to undertake peacekeeping missions, documents sourced from the AU would focus more on the reports of peacekeeping operations. Recourse would also be made to the AU online and real-time archives.

For a study of this magnitude and to further facilitate the results of this research, semi-structured interviews would be conducted with officials of the African Union Peace and Security Council at the AU headquarters in Addis-Ababa. Through these officials, links would be made with peacekeeping field operatives. Achieving this would help provide a balanced view of both the political/bureaucratic and field/military dimensions of AU peacekeeping.

 About Jude Cocodia

Jude Cocodia is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Read more about the project at https://iprafoundation.org/jude-cocodia/.

To contact Jude, please send an email to info(at)iprafoundation(dot)org and we will gladly put you in contact.

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW PEACE RESEARCH GRANT RECIPIENT
Julia Bacha

Julia Bacha, of the U.S.A., was granted this award in July, 2014 for her project titled “Research Project on Women’s Leadership in Historic Nonviolent Movement-Building in the Israeli-Palestinian Context.”
About Julia Bacha
Julia Bacha is a Peabody award-winning filmmaker, media strategist, and the Creative Director at Just Vision, a non-profit in Washington, D.C. Julia started her filmmaking career in Cairo, where she wrote and edited Control Room (2004), for which she was nominated to the Writer’s Guild of America Award. Subsequently, she moved to Jerusalem where she co-directed Encounter Point (2006), and directed and produced Budrus (2009) and My Neighbourhood (2012). Her work has been exhibited at the Sundance, Berlin and Tribeca Film Festivals, broadcast on the BBC, HBO and Al Jazeera, and profiled in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times and The Economist. In addition to over thirty film festival awards, Julia is the recipient of the King Hussein Leadership Prize, the Ridenhour Prize and the PUMA Creative Impact Award. She’s a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, and a TED speaker.
Just Vision highlights the power and potential of Palestinians and Israelis working to end the occupation and build a future of freedom, dignity, equality and human security for all using nonviolent means. We tell their under-documented stories through our award-winning films, multimedia tools and targeted public education campaigns that undermine stereotypes, inspire commitment and galvanize action. Our overarching goal is to contribute to fostering peace and an end to the occupation by rendering Palestinian and Israeli grassroots leaders more visible, valued and effective in their efforts.
Read more about Julia’s project at https://iprafoundation.org/julia-bacha/.
To contact Julia, please send an email to info(at)iprafoundation(dot)org and we would be happy to put you in contact.

 

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW PEACE RESEARCH GRANT RECIPIENT
 Lauren Young

 

Lauren Young, of the U.S.A., was granted this award in July 2014 for her project titled “Promises and Pain: The Use of Patronage and Coercion to Win Elections.”

Why do citizens engage with the institutions of the state when the personal costs can be high and the benefits uncertain? What strategies can the state use to incentivize participation? Under what conditions is a positive rather than negative inducement more powerful in motivating participation? This project explores the determinants of public participation in government in the case of Zimbabwe using a unique mix of original and existing data sources from remote sensing, surveys, and participatory methods. The main outputs of this project are twofold: first, a theoretical study of the relationship between environmental factors and public participation; and second, a methodological study comparing the validity of different methods of measuring participation in Zimbabwe.

Popular participation in collective efforts has long puzzled social scientists. One possible answer for why people participate in collective efforts to engage with the state is that the state provides inducements to individuals or small groups to internalize the collective costs and benefits. A key hypothesis of this project is that economic inducements such as access to state support for agriculture or nutritional supplements will be more effective in inducing participation at lower levels of economic security.

The methodology in this research combines both qualitative and quantitative methods with a focus on proving and tracing causal relationships. Proving that changes in economic security cause shifts in the effectiveness and mix of strategies used by the state requires the identification of a source of exogenous variation in the independent variable. This project uses deviations of rainfall from historical averages and shifts in the global prices of commodities produced in specific parts of Zimbabwe to identify the causal effect of shifts in economic security on participation. It then uses qualitative methods to trace the causal processes underlying the observed relationships.

The fieldwork for this research will be conducted in the fall of 2014 in Zimbabwe.

About Lauren Young

Lauren Young is currently engaged with her PhD in Political Science at Columbia University. She has studied collective action and engagement with the state and state-like institutions in countries around the world, including Liberia, Hungary, and Haiti. She also works in analysis and evaluation of humanitarian interventions with international organizations including the U.N. Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, International Rescue Committee, and U.N. Population Fund.

Read more about Lauren’s project at https://iprafoundation.org/lauren-young/.
To contact Lauren, please send an email to info(at)iprafoundation(dot)org and we would be happy to put you in contact.

To Learn More About Us
Visit our website at www.iprafoundation.org
In This Issue

Support the IPRA Foundation

 

Supporting the essential work of our professional community is more critical in today’s political environment than ever before.  Please contribute to the IPRA Foundation today!

International and U.S.-based donors can easily and securely support the IPRA Foundation. Click the PayPal button below to make a secure contribution to our General Fund.

Or

send a check made payable to “IPRA Foundation” to:

IPRA Foundation

c/o Rachel Trueblood,Treasurer
2855 Rock Creek Circle #289
Superior, CO  80027
treasurer(at)iprafoundation(dot)org

 A contribution form to include with your check can be downloaded here.

The IPRA Foundation is a tax-exempt, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Contributions are tax-deductible in the United States.

Now Accepting Applications for the Peace Research Grants Program

 

The Peace Research Grant Program provides grants of up to $5,000 for outstanding proposals. The IPRA Foundation accepts applications for the The Peace Research Grant Program on a rolling basis. 

  

More information about the Senesh Fellowship may be found at https://iprafoundation.org/peace-research-grants/ 

 

The Peace Research Grant Application and Instructions may be found at https://iprafoundation.org/peace-research-grants-instructions/

 

PEACE RESEARCH
GRANT RECIPIENTS’
FINAL REPORTS

Six of the IPRA Foundation’s Peace Research Grant recipients have submitted the Final Reports on their projects. Each final report may be found at the bottom of their webpages on our website as pdfs.. These Final Reports represent stellar research by top peace researchers. Please take a few moments to read this cutting-edge research.

 

Katherine Layton
Chechens”

 

W. Timothy Austin

“Peacekeeping Models in a Terror-Prone Land: The Case of Northwestern Mindanao in the Southern Philippines”

Raul de la Sierra Sanchez “Bandits or States? Evidence on Armed Groups’ Motives to Attack or Protect Civilians from Eastern Congo”

Dr. Maysa Siag “The Social Representations of the Self and Homeland shared by Palestinian Adolescents Born in Diaspora and Living in Refugee Camps”

Saba Bebawi

 “Democracy-Building in Post-Conflict Regions: Investigative Journalism Training Post-‘Arab Spring'”

  Emma Swan “An Exploration into the Gendered Interpretation of Summud and Its Subsequest Manifestations in Palestinian Peacebuilding: Towards a Gender Inclusine Model of Peacebuilding”

FIRST IPRA FOUNDATION PLENARY AT IPRA CONFERENCE
.

 

The IPRA Foundation hosted its first ever Plenary at the August, 2014 IPRA Conference, featuring four stellar presentations from one of our past Senesh Fellows and three of our past Peace Research Grantees.  Linda Johnston, IPRAF President, presented the plenary, which featured:

Isioma Kemakolam, of Nigeria, a Senesh Fellow from 2010-2011 attended Coventry University in Coventry, UK for a Masters Degree in Peace and Reconciliatory Studies.  Her thesis topic was “Building the Capacity of Traditional Institutions for Enhanced Participation of Women in Peacekeeping”.

Karenjot Bhangoo, of Canada, a Small Peace Research Grant recipient from 2004  “How Does Religious Conflict Shape the Views of Conflict and Peacemaking in the State of Punjab?”

 Zahid Shahab Ahmed, of Pakistan, a Small Peace Research Grant recipient from 2007  “Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA): The Analysis of International Development Interventions in Pakistan.”

 

Ayse Betül Çelik, of Turkey, a Small Peace Research Grant recipient from 2011 “Imagining Peace: Perceptions of Women Members of Parliament on the Kurdish Question in Turkey.” See her IPRA Conference presentation in Sage Publications here and on her webpage.

 

 

Contact Us
Dr. Linda M. Johnston, President
IPRA Foundation

president(at)iprafoundation(dot)org

This Newsletter is brought to you by the IPRA Foundation IPRAFoundation.org