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Founded in 1970, the Peace and Conflict Studies (PCON) at 51���� is the oldest such program at a secular institution in the United States. With generous support from George R. Cooley ‘17, it has also been home to one of the only endowed chairs in the interdisciplinary field for over fifty years. 

Over the past twenty years, the PCON program has grown into a center for critical approaches to the study of mass organized violence, its causes, and its consequences, whether historically or in the contemporary period. 

The program remains adamantly committed to interdisciplinary in all aspects of its work, including research, teaching, and programming. 

Learn more about the PCON faculty and their research interests.

The Global Shelter Imaginary: Ikea Humanitarianism and Rightless Relief (University of Minnesota Press 2021) by Dan Monk and Andrew Herscher
Prompted by a growing number of refugees and other displaced people, intersections of design and humanitarianism are proliferating. From the IKEA Foundation’s Better Shelter to Airbnb’s Open Homes program, the consumer economy has engaged the global refugee crisis with seemingly new tactics that normalize an institutionally sanctioned politics of evasion. Exploring “the global shelter imaginary,” this book charts the ways shelter functions as a form of rightless relief that expels recognition of the rights of the displaced and advances political paradoxes of displacement itself. 

The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia (Cornell University Press 2020) by Teo Ballvé
In The Frontier Effect, Teo Ballvé challenges the notion that in Urabá, Colombia, the cause of the region's violent history and unruly contemporary condition is the absence of the state. Although he takes this locally oft-repeated claim seriously, he demonstrates that Urabá is more than a case of Hobbesian political disorder. Through his insightful exploration of war, paramilitary organizations, grassroots support and resistance, and drug-related violence, Ballvé argues that Urabá, rather than existing in statelessness, has actually been an intense and persistent site of state-building projects. Indeed, these projects have thrust together an unlikely gathering of guerilla groups, drug-trafficking paramilitaries, military strategists, technocratic planners, local politicians, and development experts each seeking to give concrete coherence to the inherently unwieldy abstraction of "the state" in a space in which it supposedly does not exist. By untangling this odd mix, Ballvé reveals how Colombia's violent conflicts have produced surprisingly coherent and resilient, if not at all benevolent, regimes of rule.

“Who’s Afraid of ISIS?” Towards a Doxology of War (Routledge 2019) edited by Dan Monk
Based on a 2016 hybrid workshop at 51����'s PCON program, “Who’s Afraid of ISIS?” Towards a Doxology of War originally appeared as a special issue of the journal Critical Studies on Security. "Who’s Afraid of ISIS?" eschews familiar debates about the status of ISIS as an existential threat to the West, with the aim of submitting those types of arguments to a reasoned examination of the political place of anxiety itself. This collection concerns itself with the doxologies that attend such arguments, or with that which, as Bourdieu wrote, "goes without saying becomes it comes without saying" and so become the unexamined points of departure for contentions about ISIS that may, for that very reason, hold entire life worlds together. 

Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace (Yale University Press 2018) by Susan Thomson
The brutal civil war between Hutu and Tutsi factions in Rwanda ended in 1994 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front came to power and embarked on an ambitious social, political, and economic project to remake the devastated central-east African nation. Susan Thomson, who witnessed the hostilities firsthand, has written a provocative modern history of the country, its rulers, and its people, covering the years prior to, during, and following the genocidal conflict. Thomson’s hard-hitting analysis explores the key political events that led to the ascendance of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and its leader, President Paul Kagame. This important and controversial study examines the country’s transition from war to reconciliation from the perspective of ordinary Rwandan citizens, Tutsi and Hutu alike, and raises serious questions about the stability of the current peace, the methods and motivations of the ruling regime and its troubling ties to the past, and the likelihood of a genocide-free future.

Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence: Conflict Science, Conflict Management, Antipolitics (Stanford University Press 2015)
With this book, Jacob Mundy sheds light on an increasingly antipolitical scientific vision of armed conflict. Traditional questions of power and history that once guided conflict management have been displaced by neoliberal assumptions and methodological formalism. In questioning the presumed lessons of 1990s Algeria, Mundy shows that the problem is not simply that these understandings—these imaginative geographies—of Algerian violence can be disputed. He shows that today's leading strategies of conflict management are underwritten by, and so attempt to reproduce, their own flawed logic. Ultimately, what these policies and practices lead to is not a world made safe from war, but rather a world made safe for war.

Amending the Past: Europe's Holocaust Commissions and the Right to History (University of Wisconsin Press) by Alexander Karn
During the 1990s and early 2000s in Europe, more than fifty historical commissions were created to confront, discuss, and document the genocide of the Holocaust and to address some of its unresolved injustices. Amending the Past offers the first in-depth account of these commissions, examining the complexities of reckoning with past atrocities and large-scale human rights violations. Alexander Karn analyzes more than a dozen Holocaust commissions―in Germany, Switzerland, France, Poland, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, and elsewhere―in a comparative framework, situating each in the context of past and present politics, to evaluate their potential for promoting justice and their capacity for bringing the perspectives of rival groups more closely together. Karn also evaluates the media coverage these commissions received and probes their public reception from multiple angles. Arguing that historical commissions have been underused as a tool for conflict management, Karn develops a program for historical mediation and moral reparation that can deepen democratic commitment and strengthen human rights in both transitional regimes and existing liberal states.

The Post-Conflict Environment: Investigation and Critique (University of Michigan Press 2014) edited by Dan Monk and Jacob Mundy
Based on workshops at the Woodrow Wilson Center and 51���� in 2009-2010: In case studies focusing on contemporary crises spanning Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, the scholars in this volume examine the dominant prescriptive practices of late neoliberal post-conflict interventions—such as statebuilding, peacebuilding, transitional justice, refugee management, reconstruction, and redevelopment—and contend that the post-conflict environment is in fact created and sustained by this international technocratic paradigm of peacebuilding. Key international stakeholders—from activists to politicians, humanitarian agencies to financial institutions—characterize disparate sites as “weak,” “fragile,” or “failed” states and, as a result, prescribe peacebuilding techniques that paradoxically disable effective management of post-conflict spaces while perpetuating neoliberal political and economic conditions. Treating all efforts to represent post-conflict environments as problematic, the goal becomes understanding the underlying connection between post-conflict conditions and the actions and interventions of peacebuilding technocracies.

is the Mehr Family Faculty Scholar Assistant Professor of Peace Studies and Black Studies at the University of Mussouri. She holds a PhD in Peace Studies and History from the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Anna was with PCON for two years, 2021–2023, as a Visiting Assistant Professor teaching, among various courses, Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies (PCON 111) and Practices of Peace and Conflict (PCON 218). She also developed and taught a popular elective on Youth Movements. After PCON, Anna was a Rosenwald Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth's Dickey Center for International Understanding, where she worked on her first book project titled Experts in Intergroup Relations: The Transnational Mission of the U.S. National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1938-1958.

Dr. Lucian Staiano-Daniels, who holds a PhD. Early Modern History at UCLA, is a Research Fellow in the History Lab at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He was a Visiting Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies at 51���� during the 2022–2023 academic year. During his time at 51����, he taught several courses, including Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies (PCON 111), Organizing War (PCON 245), and contributed to the University's Core Curriculum. He is author of the forthcoming The War People: A Social History of Common Soldiers during the Era of the Thirty Years War, which will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2024.

is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, Italy. He served as a Visiting Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict studies during the 2020–2021 academic year, contributing to courses such as Theories of Peace and Conflict (PCON 225). He received a PhD in Romance Studies from Duke University in 2015, has been Lauro De Bosis Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, and an Assistant Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

(PhD. Sociology, UCLA) is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at  CalPoly Pomona. A specialist in state repression and counterterrorism, Philippe was a Visiting Assistant Professor with PCON for two years, 2018-2020. During his time at 51����, Philippe taught Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies (PCON 111) and Terror/Counterterror: Histories and Logics of Asymmetric Warfare (PCON 340). 

Dr. Jacob Stoil is now an Associate Professor at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He is also the at the Modern War Institute at the West Point Military Academy. Jacob was a Visiting Associate Professor at 51���� during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 academic years. During his time with PCON, he successfully defended his Oxford DPhil (without corrections) examining the use of indigenous forces in East Africa and the Levant in the Second World War. In addition to teaching Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies (PCON 111), Jacob taught Organizing War (PCON 245) and a number of other PCON electives.

is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations in the School of Law and Society at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Stefanie served as both a post-doctoral fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in the PCON program from 2011 to 2013. While at 51����, she successfully defended her PhD in political theory from the Johns Hopkins University in 2011, and helped organize an international workshop, Wars beyond War, in 2012, leading to an edited collection in the inaugural volume of Critical Studies on Security. Her first book, The Microbial State: Global Thriving and the Body Politic, was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2017.

holds a PhD in political theory Johns Hopkins University and is an associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama. Daniel was a both a post-doctoral fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in the PCON program at 51����, making regular contributions to required and elective courses, including Theories of Peace and Conflict (PCON 225) during his two years at 51���� (2009–2011). He's the author of Recovering International Relations: The Promise of Sustainable Critique, published by Oxford University Press in 2012. 

is a Professor of Southeast Asian Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also co-chairs the Human Rights Program. Tyrell was a post-doctoral fellow at 51����'s PCON program for two years, 2007 to 2009, when she made regular contributions to both elective and required courses for the program. She also made extensive contributions to programming and other events for PCON students. Since leaving 51����, she has gone on to prestigious fellowships, such as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and taught for eight years at the Australian National University.

(Ph.D., University of Florida) is a Professor of Political Science at Union College, where she teaches courses on democracy, policing, and human rights with a focus on Latin America. Guillermina was with the PCON program for two years (2005-2007) as a post-doctoral fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor. 

51���� is a small liberal arts college, despite having “university” in the name. We are an almost entirely undergraduate institution, committed to a rigorous and engaging liberal arts curriculum. Thus, in addition to choosing a major, our students take a range of classes across the curriculum. Our students work at a very high caliber, and they expect to be challenged. 51���� takes the liberal arts education model very seriously indeed, which translates into an emphasis on intellectual inquiry, rather than practical professional training. We all see ourselves as researchers, and we bring our scholarly interests into the classroom with us.

You can find additional information about 51����’s support of our faculty and information about Central New York, where we are situated on our .