The Conflict Tipping Podcast

Cancer, conflict, and digital technologies in peace mediation with Dr. Miguel Varela Rodriguez [Ep. 18]

In this episode, Laura speaks with Dr. Miguel Varela Rodriguez, an academic at the University of Valladolid in Spain, and peace mediation expert.  Listen if you're interested in:
 
How cancer and conflict are portrayed on social media
Use of images in peace mediation
The role of technology and AI in peace mediation
 
About Miguel:
 
Miguel is a PhD sociologist and photographer. His work looks at social conflict, public health and collective photographic practices, focusing on social media.  He teaches negotiation and mediation at the University of Valladolid in Spain, has a long history of peace work with organisations such as MediatEUr and Conciliation Resources, and consults for NGOs and development agencies.
 
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miguel-varela/
Website: https://www.miguelvarela.me/
About Laura:
Laura is a former Executive Director of the International Mediation Institute and a negotiation and mediation lecturer.  Her doctoral research asked “in what ways does blame make villains in politics” and covered the gamut from literature studies and linguistics to psychology and neuroscience, victimology to political science.  Her expertise includes emotions, polarization, blame, and international politics.  Feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn or ResearchGate—or even both!

Making Lives More Complex (and Democratic) with Shannon Wheatley Hartman [Ep. 17]

In this episode, Laura speaks with Dr. Shannon Wheatley Hartman of the Interactivity Foundation.  Listen if you are interested in learning more about:
A collaborative approach to academia and the classroom
Dealing with group think
When NOT to collaborate
Embracing cultural humility
Community conversations and democracy as an aspirational idea
Avoiding both-sides-ism
Bringing together communities and building inclusive events
 
About Shannon:
 
Shannon is vice president of the Interactivity Foundation in the US, an organisation that engages citizens in the exploration and development of possibilities for public policy. Prior to working at IF, she was full-time lecturer of international relations at Arizona State University, and her academic interests include nonviolent resistance, postcolonialism, participatory action research, and deliberative democracy. 
 
Links:
https://www.interactivityfoundation.org/people/shannon-wheatley-hartman/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-wheatley-hartman-420ba41b
https://www.collaborativediscussionproject.com/
 
About Laura:
 
Laura is a former Executive Director of the International Mediation Institute and a negotiation and mediation lecturer.  Her doctoral research asked “in what ways does blame make villains in politics” and covered the gamut from literature studies and linguistics to psychology and neuroscience, victimology to political science.  Her expertise includes emotions, polarization, blame, and international politics.  Feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn or ResearchGate—or even both!

Accents, inclusion, and migration with Dr. Zdena Mtetwa-Middernacht

In this episode, Laura speaks with Dr. Zdena Mtetwa-Middernacht, whose doctoral research focused on whiteness in migration. Listen if you are interested in:
 
Why you might need to learn to fake an Australian accent
Colonisation and legacies of privileged whiteness in Zimbabwe
What intersectionality means and how it affects our lives
Transnationalism and living in two places at once
Wearing different identity hats, and living different lives
 
 
About Zdena:
 
Zdena Middernacht began reading for a PhD in International Relations in 2013. Prior to this she earned a Masters in International Relations from the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan (2012),a BA Honours in Organisational Psychology from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in South Africa (2008) and a BA Psychology degree (2007) also from the NMMU.
 
She has worked for civil society organisations in South Africa and in Belgium, including Khulumani (South Africa), The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples’ Organization (Belgium) and Save the Children (Belgium). She is currently working as a Senior Research Consultant for ODS in Brussels, and as Non-Executive Director for Seefar Enterprise, whose mission is working with vulnerable people to build a better future.
 
She has also served as a member of the executive committee of the South African Youth for International Diplomacy.
 
Links to learn more:
Zdena's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zdena-mtetwa-middernacht-ph-d-111bb59
Her Twitter: https://twitter.com/zdenamtetwa/
 
About Laura:
 
Laura is a former Executive Director of the International Mediation Institute and a negotiation and mediation lecturer.  Her doctoral research asked “in what ways does blame make villains in politics” and covered the gamut from literature studies and linguistics to psychology and neuroscience, victimology to political science.  Her expertise includes emotions, polarization, blame, and international politics.  Feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn or ResearchGate—or even both!
 

Gender, conflict, and saving pandas with Brianna Hernandez

In this episode, Laura speaks with PhD candidate Brianna Hernandez, whose work focuses on gender, conflict, and environmentalism.  She is currently at Florida International University, committee member for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and a WWF panda ambassador.
 
Listen if you want to hear about:
The problem of binaries and black-and-white thinking
Why we can't 'just add women and stir' in peacebuilding processes
'Not all men', gender-based violence, and victim/perpetrator roles
The cross-over between gender inclusion and environmentalism
The problem of empowerment
When we should (and shouldn't!) listen to experts
 
 
Links to learn more:
Personal website: https://briannanhernandez.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brihz1/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_brihernandez1

Integrating collective trauma with Adrian Wagner

In this episode, Laura speaks with PhD candidate Adrian Wagner, whose research focuses on the integration of collective or community trauma.  He is undertaking his PhD at the Universität Witten/Herdecke, is a research fellow at the European School of Governance, and works as a coach and facilitator for transformational leadership.
 
This episode is for you if you want to hear about:
 
The long footprint of collective traumas (e.g. wars, covid)
How we use narratives to make sense of the world (and when that goes wrong)
Grieving and processing shared traumas
Links between trauma histories in Germany and reactions to the invasion of Ukraine
The need to gain emotional insight to tackle the world's big problems
 
Links to learn more:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-wagner-blackforrestconsulting/
Pocket Project on Collective Trauma Integration: https://pocketproject.org/about/what-is-collective-trauma-integration/
Research report: https://pocketproject.org/collective-trauma-democracy/
Publication: https://publications.iass-potsdam.de/pubman/faces/ViewItemOverviewPage.jsp?itemId=item_6002593_3
About the report (in German): https://www.mehr-demokratie.de/projekte/deepening-democracy/forschungsbericht?sword_list%5B0%5D=Trauma&sword_list%5B1%5D=and&sword_list%5B2%5D=democracy&no_cache=1

Gender, climate change, and conflict with Laura Aumeer

In this episode Laura interviews Laura Aumeer, Director of the Europe-Asia Department of Conciliation Resources, overseeing work in the South Caucasus and South Asia regions, as well as cross-regional peacebuilding work.
Laura brings expertise on adaptive peacebuilding management and led our work with the Smart Peace consortium, an innovative consortium integrating research and implementation to address complex conflict problems. She also worked closely with the Women Mediators across the Commonwealth Team, providing secretariat support to the network. 
Before Laura joined Conciliation Resources, she set up and managed violence reduction programmes with a focus on learning and innovation, for an international development consultancy, where she managed teams in Nigeria, South Sudan and Malawi. She previously worked in DFID, to support adaptive programming and learning.
Before this, she worked in and with grassroots UK-based charities to advocate for an inclusive approach to tackling gender-based violence, and to increase support for women's organisations. She holds an MSc from LSE in politics and democracy, for which she conducted research with women's organisations and wider civil society organisations in Thailand and Egypt on the changing nature of civil society-state relations.
Laura Aumeer | Conciliation Resources (c-r.org)

Brains, conflict, and democracy with Dr. Sebastian F. Winter, MD

In this episode Laura interviews Sebastian F. Winter, a physician-scientist working at the intersection of public health policy, medicine, and academia with a vision to shape healthcare and inspire a lasting social impact. 
He is currently Head of Policy and Research at the International Bureau for Epilepsy (IBE), where he works with an interdisciplinary team committed to make epilepsy a global public health priority and improve the lives of over 50 million people living with epilepsy worldwide.
Beyond previous roles in clinical medicine and research, he co-founded and co-lead a social venture that promotes mental health and peace-building among refugee communities. A globally trained MD-PhD with exposure to various healthcare systems across four continents, he is passionate about public health and education policy (past projects at WHO Europe and UNESCO), as well as academic research, including projects in neurotoxicity, oncology, refugee mental health, brain health, NCD prevention, and public health ethics.
His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Neuro-Oncology, Neurology, the European Journal of Cancer, The Brookings Institution Press, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, and the International Journal of Health Policy and Management, and he has gathered substantial experience as a public speaker at international conferences and platforms including TEDx.
An alumnus of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung) and affiliate researcher at the MGH Cancer Center at Harvard Medical School, he holds a Ph.D. (summa cum laude; '22) and M.D. (Distinction; '20) from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and a B.Sc. (1st Class Honours; '13) in Neuroscience from King’s College London, UK.
The brain health paper can be found here: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Brain-health-directed-policymaking_Final.pdf
Additional links:
https://www.sfwinter.com/
https://twitter.com/SebastianWinter
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastianfwinter/
 
 

Communities in conflict with Felicity Steadman

In this episode Laura interviews Mediator and Facilitator Felicity Steadman. Felicity's career started out in the turbulent apartheid years in South Africa where she honed her dispute resolution skills and her capacity to work with diverse groups of people in the industrial relations field. She has mediated in 32 countries for more than thirty years, with more than 500 cases completed. After arriving in the UK in 2002 she quickly adapted to a new jurisdiction, qualified as a CEDR mediator and began mediating commercial disputes through CEDR. She was first accredited as a CEDR mediator in 2003, and in 2019 was appointed Head of Faculty at CEDR.  In 2021 she was ranked by Legal 500 amongst their top mediators in the UK. She is a founding member of Oxford Mediation.
Felicity Steadman | Achieving Sustainable Outcomes

Discourse and division with Dr. Tamsin Parnell

In this episode Laura interviews Tamsin Parnell, a linguistics researcher whose doctoral work focuses on identities, discourses, and division around Brexit. She is a research associate at the University of Warwick, visiting lecturer at Birmingham City University, and is interested in media and political discourses.  In this episode, Tamsin (and her cat Willow!) join Laura to talk about Brexit, covid-19, immigration, and how to reduce inflammatory speech and division.
Tamsin's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamsinparnell/
Tamsin's twitter: @tamsinparnell
 
 

Reducing partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes with Jan Gerrit Voelkel

In this episode Laura interviews Jan Gerrit Voelkel, who is a Ph.D. Student in Sociology at Stanford University. Jan's research studies intergroup and interpersonal relationships with two guiding research questions. First, what causes people's willingness to harm others and defend inequalities? And second, how can personal or societal change be achieved that increases equality and/or reduces harm? Jan has developed interventions that increase support for policies that aim to reduce economic inequality or increase opportunity for immigrants. Jan has also led the Strengthening Democracy Challenge, a megastudy that tested 25 crowdsourced interventions for reducing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity.
Jan's academic page: https://sociology.stanford.edu/people/jan-gerrit-voelkel
Jan's twitter: https://twitter.com/jgvoelkel
Project: https://www.strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org/
Lab twitter: https://twitter.com/pascl_stanford