Last week, our Director Susann Simolin attended the European Peace Research Association (EUPRA) conference in Pisa, Italy, with the overarching theme of peace in theory and practice in troubled times. She participated in a panel on the challenges of peace research together with representatives from peace research institutes across Europe, including the Tampere Peace Research Institute, TAPRI, which had many researchers present.
– Somewhat surprisingly, the conference gave me a good opportunity to familiarise myself with the peace research field in Finland and I met several people and institutions that may be interesting to have contact with in the future. It was also rewarding to get an updated picture of the breadth of the peace research field in Europe and beyond, and the diversity of different themes studied and methodologies used by different actors, says Susann Simolin.
The conference consisted of a number of presentations and panels held for the entire audience, as well as smaller, parallel seminars where individual researchers presented their work. Susann gave a presentation on her ongoing PhD thesis on how and why autonomous regions are used as examples in and for regions where there is conflict or political tension.
From Pisa she continued to Bolzano in South Tyrol, where she met researchers working on decentralisation and minority issues at EURAC Research and had the opportunity to follow part of a study visit from Moldova, organised by the Helsinki-based organisation CMI (Crisis Management Initiative), this time focusing on issues of school systems and education in multilingual communities.