Dr Helen Berents1
1Griffith University, Australia
Biography:
Helen Berents is a feminist scholar centrally interested in the interconnected areas of the presence and roles of young people in global politics; everyday experiences of conflict and peacebuilding; and local-global relations in peace and security governance. She is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Government and IR at Griffith University. She has recently completed an ARC DECRA Fellowship that examined youth leadership and inclusion in the context of the emergent global ‘Youth, Peace and Security’ agenda. She lives and works on the unceded lands of the Turrbal and Yuggera Peoples.
Abstract:
Ideas of peace that are rooted in local contexts have proliferated in recent years, from the ‘local turn’ (Richmond 2011; Roberts 2011), to notions of everyday peace (Mac Ginty 2014; Berents 2015; Ware and Ware 2022), ‘emancipatory peace’ (Van Leeuwen et al 2012) and more. Scholarship that takes seriously a theorisation of peace from the situated, local sites of people’s experiences can offer nuance and insights into the practices and processes of ‘building peace’ in conflict-affected contexts and beyond.
This panel seeks to bring together scholars whose work engages with local, every day, contextual accounts of peace, to reflect on the value of these approaches and to critically examine paths forward for this area of research. As the world confronts a time of polycrises, with formal governance and multilateral diplomacy under strain, sustained and careful attention to the dynamics of how peace, security, and community are built and nurtured at everyday levels offers the potential for more durable solutions to inform institutional responses.