How to Build Peace Locally
Jana Krause (Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam) has received the ERC Starting Grant for her project “Social Resilience, Gendered Dynamics, and Local Peace in Protracted Conflicts”. In this project, she focuses on how civilians protect themselves in armed conflicts and build peace locally. She will analyse how communities ‘resilient’ to conflict dynamics can remain resilient despite protracted and multi-layered conflict cycles and how they can contribute to a sustainable peace. The need for a greater analytical focus on the causes and consequences of civilian agency and social resilience is evident in the modest international peacebuilding and civilian protection record. Krause pursues an empirically grounded research agenda on social resilience. She will comparatively analyse resilience building and barriers to peace in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Kenya and Nigeria. The project uses a fieldwork-based multi-method research design that combines quantitative techniques for assessing the consequences of international peacebuilding efforts with regard to local peace and women’s empowerment with context-sensitive qualitative analysis of the often-unintended consequences of social resilience and hidden barriers to changing gender relations and peace.