The University of Notre Dame welcomed approximately 100 participants, speakers and facilitators from around the world May 26-30, here for the second annual Strategic Peacebuilding Academy hosted by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs.
Practitioners, artists, scholars, writers, researchers and faith leaders were among those attending or leading sessions as part of this year’s Academy, whose theme was “Modes of Healing.” Each day of the conference offered a track that supported this year’s theme: “Grounding Our Narratives,” “Embodiment and Ritual,” “Creative Expression” and “Looking Forward.” Over four days of networking, sessions, keynote addresses and on-campus activities, participants embraced the idea of healing as a necessary, if not foundational, practice of peace.
“‘Modes of Healing’ turned out to be a prescient theme,” said Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine, program director for the Academy, who also serves as the assistant director for doctoral studies at the Kroc Institute.
“Participants noted towards the end that they had come expecting to learn discrete tools and theories to use in their work, but left having had an experience of healing in many respects themselves.”
The conference kicked off with an evening outdoor welcome reception, followed the next morning by the opening keynote—”The One Thing Needful: Towards a Spirituality of Peacebuilding”—from Emmanuel Katongole, a professor of theology and peace studies who was recently was appointed to the directorship of the Keough School’s Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion.
Building on Pope Francis’ 2015 landmark encyclical “Laudato sì: On the Care for our Common Home,” Katongole spoke to how genuine healing begins with attentiveness to spirituality (click here to watch his presentation). Drawing from the wisdom of global leaders representing many faith communities, with many shared values, he described how attending to the “one thing needful” is at the heart of peacebuilding, and that the act of listening is a kind of communion and way of life—with God, each other and the Earth itself.
Other keynote speakers were Columbia University’s Mike Wessells, who specializes in clinical, population and family health and spoke on “Psychosocial Healing and Peacebuilding in Conflict-Affected Settings: Approaches, Challenges and Priorities," and Layli Long Soldier, an Oglala Lakota writer, poet, visual artist and educator, who presented on kinship as a responsibility and art practice.
Work group activities and more than 20 panels, breakout and plenary sessions featuring a broad array of topics were offered over the four days. Among these was a session on cultural considerations in psychosocial care led by Laura Miller-Graff that was standing-room-only. Actress Bo Petersen performed a one-woman show, “Pieces of Me,” an autobiographical play that exposes the emotional cost of living secretly as a mixed-race family in apartheid South Africa. Three representatives from Homeboys Industries, an organization that caters to rehabilitating those who have been incarcerated, members of gangs, homeless, and/or involved with substance abuse, spoke to their paths to recovery in a panel moderated by doctoral student Joachim Ozonze. In another session, members of REWIND Ephemeral Ensemble explored how embodied theatre-making can move individuals beyond the rational and push aside obstacles to peacebuilding. The conference closed with a formal dinner and reflections on the week’s learnings and discoveries.
“We sought to create an agenda that was broad in terms of healing topics addressed—and the methods to address healing as part of peacebuilding,” said Norbert Koppensteiner, director of the international peace studies major as part of the Keough School’s Master of Global Affairs (MGA) program, who led the Academy’s content planning committee.
“The range of topics and the themes that surfaced were vast: from healthcare, to art forms, trust building, individual and collective healing, decolonizing healing and spirituality in all its essence,” he said.
The Academy also attracted alumni now working in the peacebuilding field. Malalai Habibi and Jasmine (KP) Passa, both part of the 2019 inaugural MGA graduating class, attended this year’s gathering and met up with other alumni onsite thanks to the coordination of Anne Hayner, associate director for Alumni Relations.
“What stayed with me most was John Paul Lederach's framing of resilience as not just bouncing back but bouncing back to purpose,” said Habibi, a practitioner with more than a decade of experience in human and women’s rights, peace and security, advocacy and grantmaking. She currently advises the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development.
“He emphasized that systems of harm reproduce isolation and reactivity, and that resisting them requires imagination, creativity, and accompaniment. In my work alongside women of Afghanistan, navigating nonviolent resistance under gender apartheid, I realized I’ve been living inside these ideas without always stepping back to see the larger frame. The week gave me some of that perspective and some of the language to go with it,” she said.
Another learning was the importance of space for the inner life of a practitioner—not as a side conversation but as central to the work. Habibi is currently invested in an initiative that sits at the intersection of art, storytelling, human rights and peacebuilding, with women of Afghanistan as creators and leaders.
“The Academy sharpened my thinking about what it means to hold space for imagination under prolonged authoritarianism and displacement, and it reminded me that the creative and the political are not separate tracks. I am carrying that into the work ahead,” said Habibi.
Passa is currently building a dance facilitation model enabling local organizations to lead on context and community needs, as she integrates healing-informed peacebuilding frameworks and Kuchipudi classical dance technique. The vision is that together, parties will co-design mythological storytelling workshops, to empower vulnerable communities.
“I came to the Academy hoping to brainstorm my idea of classical dance, peacebuilding, empowerment and healing, and wanting to reconnect with my peacebuilding theoretical roots,” said Passa.
“What made an impression on me is that healing is a broad term and intersects with many different parts of peacebuilding work. It can't be siloed but must be integrated throughout conflict work for sustainable peace to be built.”
Overall, the take-away feeling at the end of the gathering was one of joy.
“The Strategic Peacebuilding Academy is different from an academic or professional conference,” said Sawyer Vidrine, when asked to sum up the convening.
“You sense calm, peace, openness and gratitude. The Academy takes people from different regions, professions, and walks of life and turns them, in a matter of a few days, into a real community.”
Peace education—how to teach the discipline, what to teach in light of rapidly changing environments and political agendas, and more—will be the theme of the 2027 Academy, to be held again on the Notre Dame campus. Details and dates are being determined; visit the Academy web page, where updated information will be posted.