PCRC2026 Speakers

This page is updated periodically as the PCRC2026 program develops and additional speakers and presentation details are confirmed.

Wold Peace is Possible

This presentation explores the possibility of achieving lasting world peace and bringing an end to war as a recurring feature of human history. Drawing on Alberto Portugheis’ long-standing engagement with peace advocacy, international dialogue, and the idea that war is neither inevitable nor an unavoidable condition of human society, the session will examine the political, social, cultural, and psychological assumptions that continue to sustain armed conflict. It will consider what changes would be required at both individual and collective levels to move beyond systems based on fear, rivalry, militarization, and retaliation, and toward structures that prioritize cooperation, dialogue, mutual understanding, and the peaceful resolution of disputes. The presentation invites participants to challenge the belief that permanent peace is unrealistic and to consider practical and ethical pathways through which societies, institutions, and citizens can contribute to a world in which conflicts are addressed without resorting to war.

The Influence of Buddhist Principles on Social Conflict Dynamics and Mechanism of Conflict Resolution

This paper explores the causes and consequences of social conflict, violence, and war, and considers how Buddhist teachings may contribute to their prevention and resolution. Drawing on Buddhist principles, it identifies desire, hatred, fear, attachment, and delusion as key roots of conflict, while highlighting non-harming, patience, mindfulness, dialogue, and compassion as constructive alternatives to retaliation and violence. The presentation also examines the Four Sublime States—loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity—as foundations for peaceful relationships, alongside ethical conduct and responsible leadership. It argues that lasting peace requires both inner transformation and just social governance, and that Buddhist values remain highly relevant to building more humane and harmonious societies.

Developing powerful pedagogies and communities for peace and justice education

A world that is becoming less peaceful, more unequal, and increasingly unsustainable requires the strengthening of the practices and scholarship of peace and justice education. This paper discusses the roles of powerful pedagogies and communities of peace praxis in advancing peace and justice. Going beyond typical pedagogies of reflection, dialogue, and action, it sheds light on relational pedagogy and pedagogies of care and hope as ways of advancing critical peace education. Such pedagogies are considered from the perspective of indigenous knowledge systems. In addition, the paper explores the role of powerful pedagogies in establishing safe spaces for deep sharing and supporting trauma healing. Drawing on examples from well-established international peace and justice programmes, the paper illustrates how such pedagogies can be co-developed in communities of praxis involving university and community partners.

The Law of Ruma: Non-Retaliation, Emotional Literacy, and Peacebuilding Through Silent Self-Regulation

The Law of Ruma presents a simple framework for understanding how retaliation can escalate interpersonal conflict and how non-retaliation may interrupt that cycle. Using the metaphor of “Ruma” as a form of emotional value, the framework explains how anger can be transmitted between people and how responding with further anger may intensify or perpetuate conflict. In contrast, silent self-regulation creates a pause in which an individual can process emotion without immediately retaliating. This presentation explores the Law of Ruma through the perspectives of emotional literacy, non-retaliation, and peacebuilding. It considers how the framework may be used as an accessible educational tool to help individuals, including young people, visualize emotional exchanges and reflect on their responses to conflict. Rather than advocating passive acceptance, the approach emphasizes deliberate emotional regulation as a first step toward breaking cycles of retaliation and creating space for dialogue, understanding, and peaceful conflict transformation.

Peace in Practice: Teaching Reconciliation Through Social Identity Frameworks

This paper introduces a social identity–based pedagogical model for reconciliation that challenges the prevailing tendency to situate reconciliation exclusively in post-conflict settings. While much of the peace education and conflict prevention literature emphasizes early intervention and structural prevention, less attention has been paid to how reconciliation processes can be meaningfully taught and practiced during periods of escalating or ongoing violence. Addressing this gap, the paper positions reconciliation as a dynamic, relational process that operates across the full trajectory of violence and is central to sustaining human security in divided societies.

Methodologically, the model operationalizes key social identity theory variables to analyze how ingroup/outgroup relations transform under conditions of violence, demonstrating how the same identity-based factors can be leveraged to design reconciliation practices that address relational harm, restore trust, and cultivate moral re-engagement even in the absence of formal peace agreements. The paper reviews both classroom and real-world applications of the model, assesses its effectiveness, and advances an identity-centered approach to reconciliation that offers practical guidance for peace education, civil society engagement, and human security in divided and conflict-affected societies.

Neurochemical Foundations of Inner Peace Through Cultivating Loving-Kindness Based on Ānāpānasati Sutta and the Noble Eightfold Path

This presentation explores how Buddhist contemplative practice may contribute to inner peace and non-violent conflict transformation through psychological, physiological, and neurochemical processes. Drawing on the Ānāpānasati Sutta, the Karaṇīyametta Sutta, and the Noble Eightfold Path, it examines the cultivation of loving-kindness (mettā) together with mindfulness of breathing (ānāpānasati). The presentation integrates Buddhist teachings on the six sense bases, feeling, and mental reactivity with findings from affective neuroscience. It explains how stressful sensory experiences, such as blame or hostile speech, may activate threat-related brain systems and stress responses. In contrast, mindful breathing and loving-kindness practice may support emotional regulation, parasympathetic activity, compassion, and prosocial conduct. The presentation introduces the Neuro-Mindfulness Integration Model, linking Right View and Right Intention with neurochemical regulation and the outward expression of Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood. It proposes that cultivating inner peace is an essential foundation for sustainable peacebuilding.

The Failure of Mediation Processes in Venezuela (2014–2026): Understanding Intractable Conflicts and Insights for Sustainable Peace

This presentation examines the exhaustion of mediation efforts in Venezuela between 2014 and 2024 through the lens of intractable conflict theory. Rather than interpreting the failure of negotiations only as the result of poor timing, weak incentives or mediator limitations, it argues that Venezuelan mediation processes became trapped in a self-reinforcing conflict system marked by distrust, perceived existential threat, moral rejection of the adversary and increasing external coercion.

Drawing on doctoral research and preliminary survey findings, the presentation explores how emotional and relational dynamics, particularly distrust and contempt, shaped attitudes toward negotiation and limited the transformative potential of elite-level agreements. It also considers the role of international pressure, especially external coercive measures, in hardening positions and narrowing the space for negotiated compromise.

The paper contributes to debates on mediation, conflict transformation and peacebuilding by suggesting that, in deeply polarized contexts, mediation cannot be assessed only by whether political agreements are reached. It must also be understood in relation to the deeper psychosocial and systemic conditions that make negotiation possible or impossible.

Peace Was Never Possible — Until Now: From the Absence of Conflict to an Architecture of Coherence

Humanity has built institutions dedicated to peace, diplomacy, and conflict resolution, yet a fundamental question remains unresolved: What is peace, and against what common reference can we determine whether our systems, institutions, and actions are actually creating it? This presentation argues that many peacebuilding efforts may be constrained by the absence of a shared reference for the outcome they seek. Greenprint4LIFE proposes LIFE as that reference—not as an ideology or belief system, but as a common relationship within which human diversity can coexist. From this perspective, peace is understood not simply as the absence or management of conflict, but as coherence across internal, relational, and systemic dimensions.

The presentation also introduces A.C.T.E.—Accountability, Conduct, Transparency & Ethics—as an emerging framework for examining whether institutions, policies, technologies, and human choices align with their stated intentions and ultimately honour LIFE. Rather than offering another prescriptive model, it invites participants to consider a deeper question: What becomes possible when LIFE provides the reference, accountability provides the test, and peace becomes the alignment?

Faith Actors as Security Assets: Institutionalizing Inter-Religious Mediation in Ethiopia

In contexts marked by identity-based tensions, religious polarization, and recurring conflict, faith actors represent an important yet underutilized resource for peace and security. This presentation examines how religious leaders and interfaith institutions can move beyond informal peace initiatives to become recognized partners in conflict prevention, mediation, and peacebuilding. Drawing on Ethiopia's experience, particularly the Joint Initiative for Strategic Religious Action (JISRA), it explores how interreligious dialogue, community-based mediation, and the meaningful participation of women and youth contribute to social cohesion and peaceful coexistence. The presentation also examines opportunities to institutionalize these contributions through inclusive peace structures, partnerships with government and civil society, and stronger connections between community-led initiatives and formal peacebuilding mechanisms. It offers practical lessons for strengthening sustainable, locally owned, and inclusive approaches to peace and security.

Beyond Settlement and Return: A Review of Research on Migrant Workers’ Employment Retention

This study examines the relatively underdeveloped field of migrant workers’ employment retention. A Web of Science review found far fewer publications on employment retention than on destination-country retention, return migration, or employee retention more broadly, suggesting that migrant workers’ decisions to remain with an employer have received limited focused attention.

Existing research is fragmented across concepts such as turnover intention, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work adjustment, and job embeddedness. The study highlights a particular gap around pre-departure preparation, worker-job matching, and training, and calls for greater integration between migration studies, human resource management, and organizational psychology to better understand how pre-migration factors shape workplace adjustment, employment stability, and later mobility decisions.

Peace processes with non-political armed groups in Colombia: a systematic review and interpretive framework for understanding their sustainability

In Colombia, peace processes have been established with armed groups that possess a political character and with those that do not. While the former are extensively documented, the latter are not; available evidence regarding them remains fragmented and lacks an integrated interpretation of the factors influencing their sustainability. This study aimed to analyze through a systematic literature review the evolution of these processes between 1990 and 2025, identifying institutional models of state intervention, the main obstacles to their consolidation, and the conditions that foster their durability. The research followed PRISMA 2020 guidelines, utilized databases such as Dialnet, EBSCO, Redalyc, Scielo, Scopus, and WPSA, and analyzed a corpus of 28 documents using an interpretive-comparative documentary analysis. The results identified three institutional intervention models: exceptional judicial submission, institutional reintegration, and differentiated socio-legal dialogue; and five structural obstacles: the persistence of illicit economies, territorial control, the reconfiguration of criminal organizations, institutional weaknesses, and legal-political tensions. The study’s primary contribution is a proposed interpretive framework explaining the sustainability of these processes based on the interplay between the effective dismantling of criminal organizations, the transformation of illicit economies, and the consolidation of a comprehensive, permanent state presence in affected territories. The study offers conceptual tools for future research on organized violence, peacebuilding, transitional justice, and public policies aimed at developing peace processes with non-political armed organizations.

Development of Buddhist Education to Propagate Peacefulness in Thai Society

This presentation explores the development of Buddhist education and its role in promoting peacefulness in Thai society. Drawing on Theravāda Buddhist teachings, it highlights the three stages of Buddhist education—Pariyatti (learning), Paṭipatti (practice), and Paṭivedha (realization)—as a pathway for personal and social transformation.

The presentation also examines four dimensions of development—physical, behavioral, mental, and intellectual—and considers how Buddhist doctrine can guide individuals in cultivating the mind, reducing suffering, and contributing to more peaceful and harmonious communities.

Beyond Symbolic Acknowledgment: Translating UN Special Rapporteur Recommendations into Domestic Legal and Policy Frameworks

International human rights mechanisms play an important role in identifying institutional shortcomings, promoting accountability, and recommending reforms. Yet the extent to which these recommendations influence domestic laws, policies, and institutional practices remains an important question for human rights governance and conflict resolution. This presentation examines how recommendations issued by United Nations Special Rapporteurs are received, interpreted, and translated within the domestic legal and policy systems of the United States and the United Kingdom. Using a comparative, process-tracing approach, the research investigates the relationship between international human rights recommendations and domestic institutional responses, paying particular attention to the mechanisms that facilitate or constrain meaningful policy engagement. Rather than treating formal acknowledgment as evidence of implementation, the study distinguishes among recognition, policy consideration, institutional mobilization, and observable change. In doing so, it contributes to broader discussions concerning international accountability, institutional responsiveness, and the relationship between human rights governance and conflict transformation. The presentation also considers how understanding these processes can inform future research and policy efforts aimed at strengthening domestic follow-through on international human rights recommendations.

Reparenting Inner Child through Mindfulness: A Practice-Informed Approach to Peace Education

This paper explores reparenting the inner child through mindfulness as a practice-informed approach to peace education. It considers how awareness of childhood experiences and unmet needs can inform the relationship between inner peace and interpersonal peace.

The presentation brings together reflection on inner-child reparenting, mindful awareness, and psychoeducation. It explores opportunities for cultivating self-compassion, responding mindfully to difficult emotions, and approaching oneself and others with greater understanding and empathy in order to nurture peace.

Rather than presenting inner work as a substitute for addressing social conflict, the session considers its potential contribution to peace education.

Applied Buddhist Ethics of Non-Enmity (Avera) for Everyday Life in Times of War

Communities in conflict zones often perceive peace as an elusive objective, solely determined by military, governmental, and diplomatic entities. This research endeavors to explore the concept of non-enmity for society from an applied Buddhist ethical standpoint, emphasizing the meaningful moral agency possessed by individuals within their restricted domains. Employing textual analysis of Buddhist teachings sources, including the Dhammapada, Attadaṇḍa Sutta, Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta, and Sedaka Sutta, this study investigates the Buddha’s responses to violence in two instances: Viḍūḍabha’s campaign against the Sākyans and the Rohiṇī River dispute. The initial illustration demonstrates the Buddha’s capacity to establish honest boundaries, as evidenced by the three instances in which the army was repelled. The second illustrates successful mediation, redirecting disputing parties toward their true priorities. Subsequently, the paper applies these teachings to practical domains, specifically cultivating loving-kindness and non-anger. It underscores mettā as an antidote to fear, self-protection as a means to safeguard others, and the importance of making intention-based ethical decisions prior to crises. At the community level, the proposal aims to safeguard interconnected institutions, including non-enmity society. Negotiate for small, mutually beneficial requests instead of imposing sweeping demands. A daily regimen that incorporates mindful breathing, the cultivation of loving-kindness, limiting news consumption, and maintaining one’s livelihood. These practices provide society with a realistic, non-partisan framework for preserving dignity, compassion, and loving-kindness. The paper concludes that Buddhist peace in daily life is not the eradication of conflict but rather the deliberate preservation of spaces where conflict cannot infiltrate.

Genocide Education as a Tool of Genocide Prevention?": What We Can Learn from Critical Genocide Education

Support for Holocaust education emerged in the late 1960s, following the Eichmann and Auschwitz trials and renewed attacks of antisemitism. Since 2005, the United Nations has supported the creation and implementation of Holocaust education programs among Member States. UNESCO has largely been responsible for developing Holocaust education programs and supporting the implementation of these programs. It is the general consensus that education is a key means of preventing future genocides. Yet, genocides have continued to happen since the 1960s. It leaves the lingering question: “How effective is genocide education as a tool of genocide prevention?” While it is important to acknowledge that education can be an important tool of genocide prevention, it cannot be denied that the current pedagogical model of genocide education is lacking. This paper aims to accomplish three things. First, it will provide a brief background on the history of Holocaust and genocide education. Second, it will use the United States as a case study and critique current pedagogical approaches to Holocaust education. Lastly, it will explore other pedagogical approaches, primarily approaches rooted in critical and social pedagogies, that can be implemented to create a more transformative contribution to genocide prevention.

Enhancing Mediation Outcomes with Technologies: an Investigating of the Impacts of Digital Communication on Peace Mediation

Enhancing Mediation Outcomes through Technology: The Impacts of Digital Communication on International Peace Mediation

How does mediation change when the parties meet on a screen rather than across a table? How can digital tools increase inclusivity without marginalizing ? How can we leverage opportunities brought by digital communication while mitigating the risks.This session presents preliminary findings from a doctoral study, supported by a Trinity Research Doctorate Award and conducted in collaboration with the CMI Peace Foundation, on how digital communication reshapes international peace mediation.

Mediation scholarship has long examined what makes in-person processes succeed, including trust, power relations, leverage, mediator bias and mutual recognition. Far less is known about how these dynamics shift when communication is partly or fully online. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach and interviews with mediators, the research treats digital communication as a variable that reshapes the architecture of mediation itself. It interacts with established success factors and introduces new ones, such as digital literacy, platform familiarity and technical security.

The presentation will share preliminary insights into how digital communication affect process design, security and relationship-building. It will also discuss how to think about digital communication in a systemic way and what these findings mean for practitioners and policymakers seeking to integrate digital capacities into peace processes responsibly.

How We Pursue Justice Matters: Rethinking the Practice of Social Change

A just cause does not automatically justify every method used to pursue it. The ways we advocate for change can strengthen our communities, but they can also create division, undermine relationships, and sometimes harm the very people we hope to help. Drawing on Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of the Beloved Community, this presentation explores an often-overlooked question: Are the methods we use to pursue justice helping create the kind of society we hope to build? The presentation introduces Integrity-Based Advocacy (IBA), an emerging framework that encourages advocates to examine not only their goals but also their methods and consequences. Built around three core capacities: Clarity of Self, Curiosity for the Other, and Commitment to Repair. IBA offers a way to pursue meaningful change while protecting human dignity. The central argument is simple: How we pursue justice matters because the methods we use today help shape the society we create tomorrow.

When Peace Threatens: Collective Anxiety and the Challenge of Sustainable Peace

Why can peace initiatives trigger anxiety and resistance in societies that long for an end to conflict?

This presentation introduces a psycho-systemic model of peacebuilding informed by large-group psychology, political psychology, the system turn in conflict studies, and organisational change. It begins with identifying collective needs and the anxiety caused when they are threatened.

Groups may respond defensively through rigid narratives and fantasies of total victory, restoration, or effortless peace, reinforcing familiar conflict patterns. Alternatively, containment, realistic expectations, and what the model calls "optimal hope" can sustain openness to uncertainty, dialogue, and adjustment.

These emotional responses acquire public meaning through collective memory, societal beliefs, and political narratives, shaping the actions of leaders, institutions, and communities.

The presentation concludes with implications for peacebuilding: recognising collective anxieties, encouraging narrative flexibility, coordinating institutional and political change, and creating conditions in which commitments to peace can survive uncertainty and setbacks.

Dialogue-Based Approaches to Conflict Transformation: A Case Study of Turkana County and Its Cross-Border Neighbours

This presentation explores Turkana County’s experiences in using dialogue to transform conflict and promote peaceful coexistence among cross-border pastoralist communities. Drawing on relationships with the Karamojong of Uganda, the Toposa of South Sudan, and the Merille (Dassanech) of Ethiopia, it examines how traditional peacebuilding practices, community leadership, and institutional cooperation can contribute to sustainable peace.

Through initiatives such as the Lokiriama Peace Accord and recent cross-border peace dialogues, the presentation highlights the importance of sustained engagement, inclusive participation, and cooperation between communities, governments, and regional institutions. It also addresses the challenges that undermine peace agreements and emphasizes the need to connect dialogue with justice, security, access to shared resources, and improved livelihoods.

The presentation argues that peace must extend beyond the absence of violence to create conditions in which communities can access water and pasture, engage in cross-border trade, protect their livelihoods, and coexist without fear. By examining these experiences, it offers practical insights into mediation, negotiation, and community-based dialogue, drawing lessons that may inform peacebuilding efforts in other conflict-affected border regions.