Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Peace, conflict and human rights
Supporting communities and people who seek to live peacefully and challenge injustice across the UK and globally requires creativity, listening and partnership.
Peace research at Leeds Beckett considers the role of civil society, activists, practitioners and ordinary people in changing their communities, making their voices heard, challenging systems which uphold militarism and the arms trade, and upholding human rights.
We see the building of peace to be complex and contextual, based on relationships, including all those affected and an analysis of power. Peace is built by those involved in the conflict and includes resistance to injustice, protection from violence and building diverse communities.
Peace in communities is affected by International politics, the global arms trade and the dominance of militarism, thus we seek to understand and develop nonviolent responses, solutions and nonviolent protest to address deep Inequalities and power imbalance in the world.
our current research areas
- Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping : including AHRC-ESRC PaCCS Funded project in Myanmar, and the UCP Research Network.
- Gender Politics of Demilitarisation - a PaCCS AHRC-ESRC funded project in Bosnia & Herzegovina
- Non-lethal weapons
- Amplify local voices: UK based project to understand the role of arts and listening in empowering and amplifying the voices of marginalised people in communities.
- Peace and Human Rights Practice: assessing shared values and knowledge within international politics
- Nuclear disarmament: following the Nuclear Ban negotiations and upgrading of nuclear weapons in the UK.
Our team
Professor Rachel Julian
Professor Rachel Julian is a Professor of Peace Studies who researches, teaches and works on nonviolence, unarmed civilian peacekeeping, peace and conflict. She has over 30 years experience in resistance and peacebuilding, including UK and international NGOs and community organisations.
Dr Maria O'Reilly
Maria O'Reilly is a Senior Lecturer in Politics & International Relations.
Dr Robin Redhead
Dr Robin Redhead researches the politics of human rights, focusing on how people empower themselves through discourses of human rights. She looks at the practices of political activism of minority groups and investigates how the visual media represent their grievances.
Dr Olayinka Ajala
Dr Olayinka Ajala is an internationally recognised researcher working on exploring the dynamics of violent conflicts and climate change in West Africa and the Sahel. His areas of interests include insurgencies, terrorism, resource conflicts and internal displacement in the region.
Current and recent PhD Research
- Winnie Bedigen
- Craig Brown
- Masuda Salah
- Anna Liddell
Partners
The NGO partners we work with are:
Transforming Conflict resolutionGlobal civilian peacekeeping is dependant on empowering and enabling local people.
