The 2011 Peace and Conflict Studies conference will focus the attention of our discipline at the community level of analysis; it contends that local-level considerations are vital to the reduction of structural violence. With the community as the foundation to the conference, we will survey the contours of six sub-topics: Education; Justice; Media; Memorialization; Infrastructure; and Psychological Trauma in a series of panel discussions. These will be united by an opening keynote event with three keynote speeches. By concentrating on the community level, we ensure that the lessons from our conference have a wide scope of applicability, whether a community of interest exists in East Timor or Israel, Chechnya or Puntland, São Paulo or Toronto. Based on our subthemes, we expect there to be interest from students of Aboriginal Studies, Architecture, Canadian Studies, Criminology, Education, Engineering, Geography, Global Health, History, International Relations, Law, Political Science, Psychology, Public Policy, Sociology, and Urban Studies, inter alia.
Trudeau Centre
The Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto aims to be a world leader in the field of peace and conflict studies and an innovative learning environment for aspiring practitioners in many varied professional disciplines. Graduating students since 1985, and now affiliated with the University’s new Munk School of Global Affairs, the Centre promotes research that investigates the root causes of conflict and methods for reducing its devastating consequences. It is committed to providing an elite and diverse group of undergraduates with the education needed to advance the cause of peace worldwide.
The Centre advocates an interdisciplinary approach and its courses both work with and challenge the traditional confines of international affairs discourse, bringing in everything from social psychology and political science to art and anthropology. Internal conflicts are studied alongside interstate warfare, with applications ranging from structural violence and relative deprivation to revolution, insurgency, ethnic strife, terrorism and genocide. Students are encouraged to expand on their classroom education through specialized study-abroad opportunities, and dedicated grants for original field research. The Peace and Conflict Studies program, together with the Trudeau Centre, strives to produce graduates with the character, resolve and skills to bring about a more peaceful global community.
