Event description
This CCDP seminar is co-hosted with the IR/PS department and will host Professor Jana Krause discussing the paper Can Local Peacebuilding Strengthen Social Resilience to Communal Violence? Survey Evidence from Kenya by Jana Krause, Kathleen Klaus, and Marika Miner.
Abstract
Can peacebuilding disrupt cycles of communal conflict and build social resilience to renewed violence? We draw on original data from Kenya to address this question. A large body of literature refers to building resilience, but the conceptualization and measurement of conflict-related indicators remains underdeveloped. To measure the impact of communal violence exposure on risks of renewed violence, we construct composite indices of vulnerability and social resilience to communal conflict. We find that exposure to communal violence heightens vulnerability but has counter-directional effects on social resilience, strengthening some aspects of resilience while eroding others. We implement a causal mediation analysis and find that awareness of local peacebuilding positively mediates the effect of violence exposure on social resilience, thereby strengthening resilience and reducing risk of renewed violence. Our contribution aims to advance comparative and cumulative research on social resilience in conflict and peacebuilding settings.
Bio: Jana Krause
Jana Krause is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo, and currently Fellow at the Center for International Security at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin (2024-25). Her research focuses on local peacebuilding, social resilience, and civilian agency in settings of communal conflict and civil war. She currently directs the ERC research project ‘ResilienceBuilding: Social Resilience, Gendered Dynamics, and Local Peace in Protracted Conflicts’. She has conducted field research in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Myanmar, and more recently in South Sudan and Kenya. She is author of ‘Resilient Communities: Non-Violence and Civilian Agency in Communal War’ (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Co-Editor of ‘Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings’ (Oxford University Press, 2023). Previously, she was Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and at Yale University. She holds a PhD from the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
about the seminars
Each semester, CCDP hosts a series of internal seminars to give our faculty, staff and affiliates the opportunity to present their work and receive feedback. The goal of the seminars is to have an informal and frank conversation about the research presented, and exchange ideas across disciplines and expertise, going beyond academic silos. Speakers at the seminars are both early career and senior scholars.
Apolline Foedit is organising the seminars for the academic year 2024-2025. For further information, get in touch at apolline.foedit@graduateinstitute.ch.