International conference “Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies” in Tunis

ABI-team members Miriam Bartelmann, Viviana García Pinzón, Fabricio Rodríguez and ABI-director Andreas Mehler report back from Tunis
 

The international conference “Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies” took place in Tunis on 11-12 October 2025. Organised by the competence network Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict in cooperation with the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM), the conference brought together researchers from MECAM and other Maria Sibylla Merian Centres for Advanced Studies (MERIAN centres) including CALAS (Mexico), Mecila (Brazil), ICAS:MP (India), MIASA (Ghana). All of these projects are funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR). 

The conference programme featured a variety of formats, such as panels, roundtables and conversations following the world café method. This international setting provided a space for critical discussions that were structured around the thematic pillars that have shaped the network's work in recent years, including the coloniality of violence and conflict, security governance beyond Eurocentric frameworks, the politics of knowledge and representation, and transformative justice. 

A key part of the programme included the presentation of two major scholarly outputs of the network: (1) the Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies: Perspectives from the Global South, and (2) the Virtual Encyclopaedia on Peace and Conflict, which is available online.

As the concluding conference of the first phase of the Postcolonial Hierarchies network (2022-2026), the event offered an opportunity for collective and critical reflection on the network's achievements and contributions. These discussions were situated in the context of the evolving challenges faced by peace and conflict studies in the face of overlapping global crises and brought new ideas and perspectives for the second phase of the project (2026-2028).