From 29th November to 1st October, the Chair of International Relations and Transnational Politics held a three-day Author’s Workshop on Peace and Conflict Studies: Perspectives from the Global South. This was a discussion forum for the authors of the handbook with the same title that is being edited by Prof. Dr. Solveig Richter and Dr. Siddharth Tripathi and being published by the Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group.
The conference was held in a hybrid format, with 21 authors joining us personally in Leipzig and more than 20 others joining us virtually. We are proud to have authors participating from 17 different countries spanning across six continents in true spirit of a great interaction between the Global North and Global South. The conference was divided into six panels along the lines of the different chapters of the Handbook. The Opening Panel on the ‘Need for an inclusive approach’ as well as a special panel on ‘CoViD-19 and Peace and Conflict Studies in the Global South’ were public panels and saw attendance from a number of external colleagues and students. The conference also included a final Fishbowl session in which several emerging and qualifying scholars took part.
The workshop facilitated intense and deep discussions and debates on important topics including the manifestations of peace, justice, and violence in the Global South as well as the agency and the criticality of Global South knowledge. Despite the technical difficulties in managing a hybrid conference, we ensured that the authors joining in online were able to participate in the discussions as well as contribute greatly to them.
We appreciate and are thankful for the financial support from Leipzig University, the Universitätsstiftung Leipzig, the Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (DSF), and the Heisenberg Program of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).