Making peace with oneself. Finding healing after trauma. Starting a conversation with ‘the enemy’. Asking for forgiveness. Overcoming divisions. Negotiating a ceasefire. Designing a peace treaty. Promoting ‘truth and reconciliation’. Campaigning for social justice. What do you think ‘peace-making’ involves? The items in this ‘room’ encourage us to look at conflict resolution, peace-making and peace-building from lots of different angles. They ask us to consider how inner peace connects to peace-making in the wider world. And they get us thinking about differences between ‘top-down’ peace-making, involving governments and international bodies, and ‘bottom-up’ peace-making, facilitated by ordinary people from the ‘grassroots’. We hope you enjoy exploring!
Picturing Peace in the DRC
Award-winning photographer Hugh Kinsella Cunningham has spent the past five years in the Democratic Republic of…
The Hidden Costs of Unification
Peace and Transcendence: Awe-Inspiring Experiences
Have you ever reached the top of a hill; emerged from a tree-lined bend…
Twenty-Five Years of the Good Friday Agreement and the Challenges of Grassroots Peacebuilding
Truth, Justice, and a Hard-Boiled Egg: Peace and Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch
“Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re…
Chintu Ka Birthday
Chintu Ka Birthday (lit. Chintu’s Birthday) is a 2019 Hindi-language film which follows a…
(Un)Natural Altruism?
Trigger warning: references to genocide and ethnic violence As ethnic and political violence erupted…
Place is the Path to Peace
How would you describe the landscape of peace? The landscape of war, propagated by…
Pockets of Peace in St Andrews
As my research on peace has developed further in the direction of taking love…
Peace on the Airwaves
Trigger warning: gendered violence, psychological trauma The aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, in…
The Ecumenical Peace Pilgrimage to South Sudan
A Christmas service in Darfur, South Sudan. Between the 5th and 7th of July…
‘Morning Light’ and Peace After Radicalisation
Trigger warning: violence against children Situated 130 kilometres from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad,…
(Imperfect) Justice via Gacaca in Rwanda
Gacaca courts, from Flickr Rwanda experienced one of the deadliest conflicts in the second…
Screenplay: No Love Lost
This summer I went with a group of friends to a nightclub in Edinburgh….
Generation Peace: the power of story telling in peacebuilding and the heroes it can produce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5f3Qhzf7U4 This podcast hosts Rob Burnet, founder and CEO of Shujaaz Inc, a multimedia youth platform…
Taking love and care seriously in classrooms
Mindfulness is the energy that allows us to look deeply at our body, feelings,…
Creating Peace in Post-Conflict Society: The use of Intergroup Contact Theory
In 2022, the Visualising Peace team at the University of St Andrews set up…
Screenplay: String Theory
‘If the world were ending, I’d hope that all my friends were in my…
The Power of Comics in Peace Education
‘Āśā’, by Harris Siderfin and Maddie McCall (2022). You can download read the full…
Addressing Ahmadinejad: Music, Comedy, and Peace
“I know you say there’s no gays in Iran, but you’re in New York…
Cambridge Union Debate: Where Does Northern Ireland Belong?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4T2Var1zdY The full debate is available to watch on the Cambridge Union Youtube Channel….
Dad’s Army: Pockets of Peace and Humour?
Still from Dad’s Army (1971), directed by Norman Cohen; timestamp 1.20.00-1.27.52, accessed via BoB…
Fractured Peace: a visual representation
Inspired by our discussions of different methods of visualising peace – and in particular,…
Journey: visualising peace through gaming
Fig. 1 – The Traveller in front of a statue of the past Designed…
Om Shanti – An invocation for peace – ॐ शान्तिः
Sinderen in the Netherlands, 2021 If somebody is a real symbol of non-violence, love,…
Colombia: The long road to peace
‘I’ve come to realise that a peace treaty is only the beginning of a…
The Magnus Archives: When Does Peace Begin?
Trigger warning – cannibalism, suicide, gore ‘As I walked alongside them, I knew that…
Education: a force for sustainable peace
‘Educating a girl will create equal and stable societies, and educated refugees will be…
Pockets of Peace in Ukraine, Spring 2022: A Reflection
An emerging trend in International Relations literature conceives of peace as acts of empathy…
Pockets of Peace in Ukraine, Spring 2022: Care for Animals
On 24 February 2022, the Russian army invaded Ukraine, starting the first international land…
Pockets of Peace in Ukraine, Spring 2022: Care through Music
On 24 February 2022, the Russian army invaded Ukraine, starting the first international land…
How to make a Fruit Basket for the Aliens
During the summer I was 14 years old, I went to a two-week summer…
Frankenstein in Baghdad
Trigger warning: descriptions of gore, body parts, corpses ‘I wanted to hand him over…
Mother Night: Guilt and Recovery
Trigger warning – discussion of the Holocaust “We are what we pretend to be,…
Claiming the Right to Be Unhappy: Brave New World and Failed Peace
Trigger warning – suicide “Most men and women will grow up to love their…
Religion, Resistance, and Indoctrination in Jojo Rabbit
“You’re not a Nazi, Jojo. You’re a ten-year-old kid who likes dressing up in…
‘Jasmine’ by Nora Nadjarian
“… But the garden was not hers, she was told. Nor was the aroma,which…
Make Me A Channel of Your Peace
Make me a channel of your peaceWhere there is hatred let me bring your…
Pentagon Peace Pals
Cuddling up to ‘peace’ in military contexts A Pentagon ‘Peace Pal’ This stuffed bear…
Peace Through Movement
‘I have always turned to dance as a means of feeling at peace –…
Padre Steve’s Christmas Journey of Healing
“In each of those encounters with those suffering there was a glimmer of hope…
Achilles in Vietnam and Peace Through Rehumanization
Trigger warning: descriptions of graphic violence In the early 1990s, Dr. Jonathan Shay was…