Annual Peace Lab Colloquium 2025

Posted on 13 June 2025

Last week, we held our second Annual Peace Lab Colloquium: ‘Visions of Peace’.

Last week, we held our second Annual Peace Lab Colloquium: ‘Visions of Peace’. The aim of the York Peace Lab is to research, design, and implement innovative approaches to peace, in close collaboration with practitioners and with our brilliant students. We spent a thought-provoking afternoon exploring the emerging dynamics of conflict and war and examining the options available for building sustainable peace and social cohesion.
We started out with two wonderful presentations from our student research interns:

Amelie Calvelli-Adorno: ‘Accepting the past: Comparing the effectiveness of interventions to promote acceptance of responsibility for the ingroup's past wrongdoings’ (mentor: Dr Lusine Grigoryan)
Sarah Maguire: ‘Developing Methodological Tools for Negotiating Peace in a Multi-Actor Setting: Addressing Challenges in Colombia’ (mentor: Dr Jose Gutierrez)

This was followed by a very inspiring panel on ‘Activism from a Distance’, which featured the personal experiences of two human rights defenders and activists: Memet Tohti Atawulla and Nazia Qani.

We finished the afternoon with a highly topical and extremely insightful panel on ‘Peacebuilding and mediation in a changing geopolitical context’, with our invited guest, Nic Hailey (Executive Director, International Alert) and York’s own Dr Gyda Sindre.

During the break, there was a chance to look at and discuss five excellent research posters prepared by our dissertation students: Alex Moore, Alex Riggs, Beatriz De Souza, Molly Glover, and Natasha Malia.

In the evening, we were delighted to be joined by the Indonesian Ambassador to the UK and RI, HE Dr Desra Percaya, who spoke on ‘Opportunities and Challenges for Peace in the New Multiplex World Order: A View from the Global South.’ As a final treat, he joined a group of our students in a beautiful rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine. A very fitting end to the day.