TESTIMONIALS FROM IPRAF PEACE RESEARCH GRANTEES
“The IPRA Foundation grant helped us get off the ground with our project. After the initial pilot that you helped fund, we were able to obtain $60,000 in funding from UNICEF and the Macarthur Foundation to expand and extend the project. We’ve just confirmed a $200,000 grant from UNICEF and the UK’s Department for International Development to extend the research another year. The research has been very well received in Uganda and New York, and we’ve advised dozens of donors and NGOs on their programs in northern Uganda as a result. Your help in the very beginning was instrumental in this success. ”
“The Nonviolent Peaceforce conducted field research to explore three potential pilot project sites for our large-scale unarmed international “peace army”: Guatemala, Israel/Palestine, and Sri Lanka. Researchers presented their findings at the Peaceforce Convening Event in India, where 130 international delegates picked Sri Lanka for the Peaceforce Pilot Project”
“We are so grateful to the Foundation for our grant that enabled us to print one of our new publications. There are Realistic Alternatives. We know of one professor who has adopted the book for his classes and we have had interest expressed by others. Clearly, this publication has been significant and had some ripple effect, which may not have been possible without the IPRA Foundation’s support”
“Our toys and violence research was started in 2002 thanks to a grant the IPRA Foundation alloted us. We are going to publish a book, illustrated with drawings and pictures. These activities take place in the framework of our Program Give Peace a Chance started in 1999 and of the Global Campaign for Peace Education of the Hague Appeal for Peace.”
“The IPRAF’s support for research on peace and conflict resolution allowed me to develop new insights on the role of economic elements in solving conflicts. Thanks to IPRAF grant, I was able to access valuable information sources, conduct interviews with key players, and perform a more comprehensive research.”
“The IPRAF small grant helped The Latin America Council for Peace Research (CLAIP) to publish the book that was result of a meeting with indigenous leaders from all the Americas, emphasizing the nonviolent conflict resolution of traditional societies. Besides five book presentations in Mexico, there was one in Buenos Aires, in the USA and in Canada with a personal link to the Senate in Argentina and further with the Ministry of Social Affairs in Chile. As a result, in both countries, two indigenous laws were developed, followed with one more in Columbia and in Venezuela. Finally, in Bolivia, where the President got the book personally and used it in his campaign for consolidating indigenous rights and participation, today there exists in the Congress an important indigenous representation to care for their rights. In academic terms, the consolidation with the Canadian University of Quebec and the organization of the Innu indigenous gave birth to different visits and interchanges and this year to the organization of a common theme in the XXXII Encounter of the Network of Urban Researchers (RNIU, in Spanish). For IPRA, it was the first book written by a Southern Regional Association dealing with issues related to peace-building, conflict resolution and prevention in a subcontinent threatened by climate change, resource access, drug war and public insecurity.”
“I thank International Peace Research Association for supporting this research. Originally, I had planned to conduct this research only in Turkey, by examining Turkish-Kurdish and Turkish-Armenian conflict contexts. This grant was instrumental not only in completing the planned research, but it also made possible to extend the research to the investigation of the ethnic conflict in Burundi. The IPRA grant was used to collect research data in Turkey and in Burundi.”
“Articles that focus on the study I did that was funded by the IPRAF grant were published in five languages (English, Hebrew, French, German and Dutch – mostly in English) in: All this is until now. There is still activity in this direction and I believe more will be published. So, it seems that there is interest in the study.”
“My work on (1) mediation and reconciliation of bloodfeuds and (2) the cross-border Balkans Peace Park have been aided by IPRA sponsorship, and presentation of work in progress at Calgary 2007 now resulting in articles: 1. (co-authored with Mentor Mustafa), “Feud Narratives: Contemporary Deployments of Kanun in Shala Valley, Northern Albania,” Anthropological Notebooks (Slovenia), pp. 87-l07. (http://www.drustvo-antropologov.si/pregled_letnikov_eng.html). 2. “Establishing the Balkans Peace Park (Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo/a). Overcoming Conflicts through Negotiation on Cross-border Environmental Protection,” Central and East European Review, Issue 2. (www.ceer.org.uk)”
“The IPRA Foundation grant has provided a very timely boost to our action research on conflict sensitivity for religious organizations in Mindanao, Philippines. For instance, the Davao Ministerial Interfaith Inc. recently hosted an IPRAF-funded workshop which brought together 15 Roman Catholic, (Protestant) Evangelical and Muslim leaders from 3 provinces to explore and document how religious leaders are using the Do No Harm / Local Capacities for Peace conflict sensitivity tool. This workshop was a key step toward next year’s publication of findings, and a major contribution to the religious leaders’ own capacity building.”
“Through the support of the IPRA Foundation, Global Education Associates has been able to develop a much needed reference for guide for peace educators on educational evaluation. The dearth of educational evaluation in the field of peace education, and the necessary training needed to conduct it properly, has been a major dilemma that few are addressing formally. By equipping educators within our networks (the IIPE, CIPE and Global Campaign for Peace Education) with some basic knowledge and skills in evaluation theory and methods we hope to make a small, but desperately needed contribution to the field. We hope to begin distributing this resource in the near future and look forward to sharing the new research that emerges.”
“We invite applicants from Mindanao, youths and adults from tri-peole -Muslims, Christians and tribal people and those who qualify go to NIU for a one-month training on peace, mediation and conflict resolution. After the training, they go back to Mindanao and do their small projects on peace in their respective communities. After three months, we assemble them for a follow-on activity where they discussed success stories as well as problems encountered in their communities.
“1. The grant gave us (my office) an opportunity to document a model for a successful program on interfaith dialogue. As an offshoot of 9/11, interfaith dialogue has become a major response to many conflicts including Mindanao. The study has become a blueprint for this kind of endeavor.
“I am very grateful to the IPRA Foundation for contributing to our Creative Response to Bullying Program in the United States. We were able to see linkages between bias and bullying behavior and show a decrease in detention rates when students and staff received CRC’s bullying prevention workshops.”
“Our grant from the IPRA Foundation allowed us to maintain a collaborative action-research project on community radio, democratization and peace in Palestine. Most of the funds were devoted to conducting and documenting a training program that was attended by some thirty youth and young professionals in Nablus. Even though the occupation and intra-communal conflict prevented our radio station from being launched, the knowledge generated and training made possible by this small grant have been invaluable in our community. Thanks to IPRA for supporting our unconventional research collaboration. It sustained us for many months of work.”
“I found the small peace research grant very useful as it gives opportunities to peacemakers to invest energies towards expanding the field of the peace research, especially young peace researchers has a lot to benefit from such funding opportunities. It is too early for me to talk about the impact of my research under the IPRA Foundations’ Small Peace Research Grant, as my paper is yet to be published and I am hoping to present that next year in at least one of the international conferences.
“A list of the policy and journal publications that came from the IPRAF-supported research can be found here:http://chrisblattman.com/projects/sway/. In the end this became a very large project with many donors, but IPRAF was one of our first and gave us the seed funding to get it off the ground. It led to four years of work on youth well-being and post-war reintegration in northern Uganda. Thanks for the support and let me know if there’s anything more I can add.”
“The IPRA Foundation grant helped me turn my project into a reality. It allowed me to go and meet with investigative journalism trainers and journalists who were doing amazing work post-conflict in the Arab region. In turn, I was able to identify the challenges and opportunities facing Arab investigative journalists, in order to produce a set of recommendations to assist them towards their journey forwards in the pursuit of a democratic Arab sphere. The grant went towards the first stage of the project, which has already resulted in securing a book contract towards the publication of the findings of the study. I am grateful for IPRAF for providing me with this opportunity and for funding projects that need to be researched.”
“I am eternally grateful for the generous support of the IPRA Foundation. Without their support this research would not have been possible. The IPRA Foundation offers a unique opportunity for an interdisciplinary group of researchers from all over the world to explore vital issues facing our world today. I am honored to be part of such an inspiring group of researchers and practitioners.”
“Much appreciation and gratitude to the IPRA Foundation for supporting research focused on understanding the direct role that religion plays in conflict and peace through the town of Malerkotla in India. Through ethnographic fieldwork I was able to explore the overall pattern of Sikh-Muslim interactions in a town that can transcend conflict and make peace the norm. Since the grant, the work has been published as a book Civil Society in Malerkotla, Punjab: Fostering Resilience through Religion and has been used in practice-based work in promoting inter religious understanding, cross-cultural awareness and conflict transformation.”
“Thanks to IPRAF’s support, our team was able to complete fieldwork in Gaza and the West Bank that provided us with critical insight into the civil resistance strategies that underpinned the mass mobilization efforts of the First Intifada. This grant enabled us to capture perspectives from women from different geographic areas, class backgrounds, education levels and positions of leadership, ensuring that our research reflects the diversity of participation in the uprising. We are very grateful for IPRAF’s generosity, which has played a key role in the success of our project.”
“We are very grateful to the IPRA foundation for the grant that enabled us to do research on how changing narratives about conflict can help reduce conflict and encourage peaceful resolution. We were able to conduct studies with Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, Americans, and Turkish Kurds in the context of different conflicts. This research would not have been possible without the generous support from the IPRA Foundation. Most importantly, consistent results indicate that putting forward new narratives about conflicts can help play a critical role in reducing conflict and encouraging peaceful conflict resolution. ”
“Thanks to the early support of the IPRA Foundation, I and my partner organizations in Zimbabwe were able to develop and test a methodology to collect information on the sensitive topic of political risk in Zimbabwe. Without this support, it would have been impossible for us to ultimately attract larger sources of funding to collect information from 1,200 respondents in a large-scale survey of opposition supporters in urban and rural areas. Our research delves into the micro-mechanisms of how citizens in an autocratic regime decide to express support for democracy to show that the emotions of anger and fear shape how citizens perceive and process information about political risk. These micro-level mechanisms also scale up into meaningful variation in who takes pro-democracy action and who stays home in a repressive environment. We look forward to continuing to work with the IPRA network as we move forward with this research agenda! ”
“My research on gendering peace process in Kashmir could only have been made possible due to the IPRA Foundation grant. The grant helped me to conduct field research in Kashmir and collect relevant data. The research offered insights on how discourses on conflict and peace in a protracted conflict situation are shaped by patriarchal social order and how both men and women reinforce that social order. The findings of the research would be relevant for theories of gender, conflict and peace and their intersections and for policy making towards making peace process gender sensitive.”
“I am grateful to the IPRA Foundation for providing me with a small grant to complete my study. The grant enabled me to undertake interviews with many stakeholders and to convene Focus Groups that were essential to the completion of the study. It was of great value that the study includes representatives of all actors in the Zimbabwe’s governance. The grant enabled victims of the lack of governance in the country to have their views taken into account, especially in the analysis of many events in Zimbabwe’s history. They were also able to participate with other stakeholders in making recommendations on how good governance and peace should be established within the framework of the new Zimbabwe’s Constitution of 2013. The IPRA Foundation’s support is therefore greatly appreciated.”
“The IPRA Foundation’s generous financial support helped me realize the most crucial element of my research project: the fieldwork component. Carrying out such a research project in remote locations in Colombia is by no means an easy feat, logistically or financially, however with the funds provided from this grant, I was able to conduct all the necessary archival and ethnographic research necessary in various locations throughout this South American country without problem. Furthermore, the research findings which this grant helped produce have become the basis for a much larger research project with an expanded focus throughout numerous highly contested regions in rural Colombia. I owe the IPRA Foundation my sincerest gratitude for helping me with this endeavor.”
“I applied for the IPRA Foundation grant never thinking I would be a recipient, but it came through. And better still, I was offered the full sum of $5,000 which was above my original quote. While I had planned a trip to Addis Ababa for my field research, the Foundation’s generosity afforded me the opportunity of a trip to Nigeria for my research as well. Getting by in Addis Ababa and movement within Nigeria where I had to travel long distances for interviews was not easy, but IPRAF’s research grant was vital to my succeeding. Some part of it also augmented my fees. The Foundation’s gesture helped my dream for a PhD anI hope the impact of my research will justify this assistance. I am deeply grateful.”
“The money I received from the IPRA Foundation helped me get a larger fieldwork project off the ground in Rwanda. The results from this fieldwork are now an integral part of my PhD dissertation. I am sincerely grateful to IPRAF for providing the initial seed funding to start this research. Without your initial support, I would not have been able to find further donors.”
“As a Cypriot, the Cyprus conflict has been a part of both my daily and professional life. My decision to embark upon a PhD, where I would focus Cypriot identities and perceptions of security, was a very personal one. The IPRA Foundation grant did not only help me deepen and enrich my PhD fieldwork with extensive use of mixed-methods, it also helped me unpack and get to know my own Cypriotness better. I hope my research findings and future publications will inform policy-making and peacebuilding efforts in Cyprus, and with more comparative analysis, they may be able to facilitate efforts in other conflict environments as well. In addition to financial help that was truly instrumental for the success of my research, it was an absolute pleasure to work with and receive the support of IPRA Foundation throughout the process.”
“Sincere thanks to the International Peace Research Association Foundation for the funding support that was instrumental in the completion of my research! This grant helped me reach members from two highly understudied minorities – Dalits (so-called lower castes) and Muslims – in the under-researched context of India, and contribute to the scarce research on minority-minority relations from a much-needed intersectional perspective.”
“The IPRAF Peace Research Grant allowed me to continue research started as part of my dissertation and further my collaboration with Sadaka Reut. With the grant funds I was able to travel to Israel during the summers of 2015 and 2016 to meet with organization staff and former participants, attend strategic planning and facilitation training meetings, in order to better understand the mechanisms that have enabled Sadaka Reut to inspire its participants to continue working towards positive social change in the Israeli context. I am grateful for this support.”
“I thank the IPRA Foundation for its support of my project on creating a dataset of violent events during the civil war in Mozambique. The support was crucial for receiving a larger grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to study the consequences of state-militia relations for political order, and has also led to collaborations with other researchers to extend the data collection effort for Mozambique. This will contribute a lot to the historiography of the Mozambican war and the study of armed conflict more generally.”
“I am very grateful to the IPRA Foundation’s generous support. The grant has supported field research in Kyrgyzstan for a project that seeks to understand how pockets of peace emerge and are sustained during episodes of violent conflict. The funding has enabled me develop an analytical framework for this phenomenon that can be explored in other contexts. It is just the beginning of what I hope will be a much broader, cross-national study of the nature and causes of pockets of peace, and it is thanks to the IPRA foundation’s support that I was able to get this research off the ground. In addition, they have been an absolute pleasure to work with and I could not have asked for a more supportive and understanding funder. Many thanks.”
“I am sincerely grateful for the generosity of the IPRA Foundation in selecting my project as the Foundation’s recipient of the Small Peace Research Grant in 2016. Winning the grant allowed me to conduct ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in understanding the important phenomenon of community-led peace zones and bottom-up peacebuilding as part of my dissertation research. Through my time in the field with the support of the IPRA Foundation, I am now in the process of writing two scholarly articles for submission to peer-reviewed journals on the field of peacebuilding and political geography. Thank you, IPRA Foundation!”
“Our project, which we hope will be a valuable contribution to current efforts deployed to solve the Syrian crisis and manage the refugee crisis attached to it, was made entirely possible by the generous support of the IPRA Foundation. We are particularly grateful to the IPRA Foundation for supporting our field work by making it possible to collect a larger set of data, but also for allowing the translation of the final paper into Arabic so that it can be accessible to the persons who contributed to it.”
“The research grant from IPRAF was a huge encouragement to me as I sought to bring my peace research project across the finish line. The funding allowed me to greatly expand my archival searches and I ultimately obtained over 1,000 separate film clips and photos that helped me bring an amazing story of peace to life in the form of a documentary film. IPRAF was great to work with as they were easy to communicate with and their requirements were always very clear.”
“The IPRAF Peace Research Grant facilitated a survey experiment in Southern Kyrgyzstan on why individuals support participation in spontaneous ethnic violence against another ethnic group. Without the IPRAF’s support, the survey would quite simply not have been done. The funding is perfect for both piloting larger surveys and, in this case, a one-time survey experiment that supplements qualitative work.”
“I am deeply grateful to IPRAF for the grant that enabled me to conduct my doctoral research. It would have been impossible for me to interview 147 respondents in a war zone where safe transportation and accommodation are expensive without it. Although the protracted conflict I researched in Congo-Kinshasa is very complex, I am optimistic that my research, which focused on people’s grassroots experiences, perceptions and images of the conflict and peacebuilding, will contribute towards establishing sustainable peace and security in Eastern Congo and the neighbouring nations. I will always be grateful to the IPRA Foundation.”
“I am so appreciative of receiving the Peace Research Grant from the IPRA Foundation. It enabled me to conduct my research in China and Russia, something that wouldn’t have been feasible for me without this grant but that was crucial for my research design. I heartily thank the selection committee for having such confidence in my work and for them understanding why my research matters. It has not only given me the opportunity to conduct my research but also helped me to gain more confidence in the significance of my scholarly work. Thank you.”
“The support I received from the IPRA Foundation proved invaluable to my PhD research in a field for which there are few funding opportunities. The funding enabled me to investigate humanitarian negotiations with armed groups in Yemen and Myanmar, and explore broader links to addressing peace and conflict in each country. The Foundation’s light touch made it quick and easy to adapt my research when circumstances required it.”
“I am very grateful for the support of the IPRA Foundation for my project on how coups d’etat escalate to civil war. Thanks to the IPRAF grant, I was able to hire a team of research assistants whose assistance was instrumental in helping me completed a new data set on state security forces in countries across the globe. I used the data set to systematically theories about the escalation of coups to civil war in a way that would not have been possible before. I anticipate that the data set will also be of use to scholars studying military effectiveness, state capacity, and repression. Articles presenting the data set and findings from the project are currently under review.”
“I am extremely grateful on many fronts for IPRA Foundation support. The IPRA Foundation grant was an important part of enabling us to carry out our survey experiment in Jos, Nigeria on the role of ethnic identities in shaping perceptions of local communal violence. The grant helped support the technical aspects of the project and collection of a large dataset that will yield a series of papers, and it also supported the hiring of 18 Muslim and Christian research assistants who themselves experienced a transformation in the course of the research—building friendships and breaking down stereotypes across inter-religious lines.”
“Without the IPRA Foundation support I wouldn’t able to carry out the survey experiment that allowed me to test innovative methods in studying public opinion in the regimes with limited freedom of speech. Therefore I gladly express my deepest gratitude for the IPRA Foundation.”
“The IPRA Foundation grant helped me to bring to light what exiled women are contributing to the peace process in Myanmar at a critical time in the country’s transformation. The Women’s League of Burma provides a powerful example of diaspora peacebuilding at a time when refugees are often seen as security threats or a burden to host countries. My book Refugees as Transnational Activists: Women Building Bridges for Social Change is much enriched by the IPRA Foundation funded research I conducted in Myanmar.”
“I am so grateful to the Foundation for the grant that enabled me to undertake the fieldwork for my PhD thesis “A Study about Collective Music Programmes as Spaces for the Rebuilding of the Social Fabric in Communities Subject to Armed Conflicts in Colombia”. Thanks to this support I was able to finish my research that will help administrators of musical projects improve their work for peacebuilding in Colombia.”
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