For the second consecutive year, the Kroc Institute will convene peacebuilders from around the world for the 2026 Strategic Peacebuilding Academy, to take place on campus Tuesday, May 26 through Saturday, May 30.
The annual event is a thematic, intensive experience aimed at mid-career peace practitioners, scholars, and those working in policy communities around the globe. Over four days participants refine their skills, learn best practices and network with other professionals across peacebuilding sectors.
“We are excited to welcome more than 60 participants to this year’s gathering,” said Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine, program director of the Academy and the Kroc Institute’s assistant director for doctoral studies.
“This year’s theme, ‘Modes of Healing,’ will bring together people working in areas as diverse as arts and performance, embodiment, ritual, storytelling, psycho-social healing, trauma studies, and community initiatives. We look forward to exploring these themes in a dynamic program,” she said.
Featured keynotes include Fr. Emmanuel Katongole, a professor of theology and peace studies with the Kroc Institute, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs. He will align Pope Francis’ attention to the world’s ecological crisis with attentiveness to spirituality in “The One Thing Needful: Towards a Spirituality of Peacebuilding” on Wednesday, May 27. Katongole will be followed by Columbia University’s Mike Wessells on Thursday, May 28, who will present “Psychosocial Healing and Peacebuilding in Conflict-Affected Settings: Approaches, Challenges, and Priorities.”
While participants are selected to attend the Academy based on a competitive application process, this year’s gathering offers two sessions that are open to the public and free of charge.
"Pieces of Me" is an autobiographical play performed by Bo Petersen that exposes the devastating emotional cost of living secretly as a mixed-race family under the vicious racist apartheid regime and the legacy it bore. The performance takes place Wednesday, May 27 at 7 p.m., at the Debartolo Performing Arts Center, Philbin Studio Theatre. Tickets are free and will be distributed one hour prior to the performance.
“Kinship is the First Art,” the final keynote presentation on Friday, May 29, will be given by Award-winning poet and author Layli Long Soldier, who will speak to kinship as both a responsibility and an art practice. Using photos and poems, she will showcase kinship with family and human relatives, with the land and all of creation. The artist talk will take place at 9 a.m. in the auditorium of the Hesburgh Center for International Studies.
“The past few years have been difficult for those of us working in the peacebuilding field,” said Asher Kaufman, John M. Regan, Jr. director of the Kroc Institute and a professor of history and peace studies.
“Wars in the Middle East, regional violence around the world, from Venezuela to South Sudan, the DRC and Ukraine, and democratic backsliding in the United States can make you question your call to peacebuilding.
“Yet to host the Academy and hear reflections from participants who are grateful to be brought together in community, especially at a time of global crisis, reaffirms why we do what we do—to convene and support peacebuilders, connecting scholarship with policy and practice.”
For more information about the Strategic Peacebuilding Academy, please click here.