At this seminar a chapter in-writing in Lisa's forthcoming book Peace and agonistic memory: Colombia, Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland (Edinburgh University Press) will be presented. The book  provides conceptual tools by which to analyse the agonistic work of grassroots peace organizations, as well as empirically pinpointing hurdles as well as enabling factors for conducting this type of work, contributing knowledge on how to improve relations among parties in war-to-peace transitions in three of the most difficult conflicts of our time. This specific chapter is built on semi-structured interviews with facilitators and leaders of local dialogue initiatives in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and sheds light on enabling and inhibiting conditions for carrying out cross-communal dialogue work on memory in a highly antagonistic setting such as Israel-Palestine with its entrenched peace process. Since the region is undergoing unusually violent circumstances, exacerbating antagonism and polarization, the chapter also tries to capture these recent developments, further enhancing knowledge on the conditions for carrying out peace work in highly troubled times.

Lisa Strömbom is Associate Professor in Political Science and MECW researcher at CMES. She has published on identities in conflict, conflict transformation and historiography, recognition in intrastate conflict as well as on grassroots peacebuilding with a main empirical focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She leads the project “Pushing the boundaries of peace research – reconceptualizing and measuring agonistic peace”, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Strömbom also serves as PI for the project "The military as an 'agent of change' for gender-relations in post-conflict societies?" funded by Vetenskapsrådet/SIDA 2019-2021. She has published the monograph Israeli identity, thick recognition and conflict transformation (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), and coauthored the text-book War and Peace in Israel-Palestine (Krig och Fred i Israel/Palestina) with Professor Karin Aggestam and Ph D Anders Persson (Studentlitteratur, 2014).

The talk is held at CMES, Finngatan 16 in Lund. If you are not able to attend in-person, there is an option to attend via Zoom. Please register here for Zoom attendance: https://lu-se.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5ItceGrrT4tHNB14hXXL9oNQlKGKEVJ3n13

This event is part of the CMES seminar series spring 2024. For more information, visit the CMES website.