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Art has long been a powerful tool for fostering understanding, reconciliation, and healing in conflict-affected societies. By transforming cultural, political, and ideological boundaries, artistic expression allows individuals to communicate, reflect, and envision new possibilities for coexistence. This issue of Peace Policy highlights the diverse ways that art contributes to peacebuilding, demonstrating its ability to cultivate empathy, challenge oppressive structures, and create spaces for dialogue.
Alison Ribeiro de Menezes explores the transformative role of theater in peacebuilding, emphasizing an “embodied dramaturgy of care” that fosters deep emotional connections. Vera Brandner discusses generative picturing, a photographic method that encourages self-reflection and dialogue. Jessica (Doe) Mehta highlights the role of poetry in Indigenous peacebuilding, illustrating how language preservation and storytelling are acts of resistance against colonial erasure. Paula Ditzel Facci introduces dancestorming as a method for decolonizing peacebuilding and peace education.
Together, these perspectives reveal that art is not just a supplementary tool in peacebuilding but a fundamental force for transformation. By engaging the senses, emotions, and intellect, artistic expression nurtures empathy, challenges injustice, and re-imagines pathways to peace, making it an essential component of sustainable reconciliation efforts.
Norbert Koppensteiner, guest editor
Tradition and Modernity in Afghanistan: Building a Bridge from Conflict to Reconciliation
At the heart of Afghanistan’s conflict lies a deep-seated tension between traditionalist and modernist forces, which has often escalated into violence and armed confrontation between these two groups. A sustainable solution to the crisis in Afghanistan requires...
The Need for a New Lexicon to Describe the Oppression of the Taliban System
The Taliban rule is characterized by scholars and policy analysts in different terms, ranging from systematic discrimination and oppression, to ethnic cleansing, gender apartheid, and Islamic totalitarianism. While all of these characterizations are valid, none alone...
How to Design A Governance System for All in Afghanistan
The federalism-unitarism debate In today’s Afghanistan, few debates cut as sharply across ethnic lines as the one over whether the state should be federal or unitary. Many Pashtun elites have long favored a unitary state, arguing that federalism could lead to the...
Peace at the Intersections
Over the course of the last few decades, intersectionality has been an increasingly adopted framework within peace studies. Generated out of the insights of Black feminist thinking, intersectionality is a powerful lens for analyzing oppression, domination, and many...
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Research-based insights, commentary, and solutions to the global challenge of conflict and systemic violence
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Searching for Policy Solutions to Pressing Global Issues
Each issue features the writing of scholars and practitioners who work to understand the causes of violent conflict and systemic violence and who seek to contribute solutions in service of building more just and peaceful societies.
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