Peace in Perspective: A Multidisciplinary Symposium at UNC Chapel Hill

This symposium brings together a diverse group of UNC faculty and students to examine how people establish and maintain peace after periods of extreme violence in prehistory, history, and our contemporary world. Our modern era has been defined by world wars, genocide, civil wars, and forms of structural violence, such as racism, wealth inequality, and repression. However, violence does not have to define our future. By uniting scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, we seek to understand how we might foster a more peaceful future.

Scholarly research has long focused on causes and consequences of warfare and other forms of violence. However, our academic focus on human violence has drawn our attention away from an essential feature of human society: peacemaking and reconciliation. Although outbreaks of warfare and raiding have occurred since the origins of agriculture, episodes of extreme violence have been followed by periods of peace. This raises an essential question: how do people restore peace and achieve reconciliation after one or more generations of killing and destruction? To examine this crucial question, we will bring together UNC faculty and students from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives for a roundtable discussion. Only by bridging disciplinary boundaries can we begin to understand the complex processes of peacemaking and reconciliation.