'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Studying peace and reconciliation in Coventry

Are you or anyone you know interested in doing some post-graduate work in Peace Studies? I got an email earlier this week from Andrew Rigby, the Director of the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University in the UK, whom I visited back in March... He said there is still (just!) time for people to apply to this year's intake for their Postgraduate Certificate in Conflict Resolution Skills.

That page on their website says:

Participants enjoy a lively two-week period of residence at Coventry University, from 2 to 14 September 2007, and follow up with six months of online, self-directed learning.

In addition, it's my understanding that the credits you earn through that PG Certificate course can be counted towards what you'd need for an MA course, or perhaps even a Ph.D. course, at their center. Just explore some more around their website to find out about that-- and also, about the fabulous, extremely multi-cultural community of learners they have there at the Center.

When I was at Coventry in March, I really enjoyed the discussions I had with Andrew and his colleagues and MA students. Nearly all the students were non-UK nationals. They brought a wealth of pertinent life-experience into the classroom and engaged deeply and very intelligently with the topics we were discussing.

Coventry University is right next door to Coventry Cathedral, which was badly damaged when the Luftwaffe bombed the city in 1940. Ever since then, Coventry Cathedral, the city-- and more recently, the city's university-- have all seen the pursuit of post-conflict reconciliation as a very important task.

... Then in April, as alert JWN readers will recall, I had a grand couple of days visiting Bradford University's Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, which is noticeably larger than Coventry's, and also takes a slightly different slice of the field of peace studies. ('Peace and conflict', rather than 'peace and reconciliation.' Both important slices.)

I see that Bradford's program-- but not, alas, Coventry's-- is on this fairly helpful list of post-graduate peace-studies programs that Eastern Mennonite University has published on the website of their "Center for Justice and Peacebuilding."

Anyway, as I said-- if you or anyone you know is interested in doing some post-graduate peace studies, Coventry's PG Certificate is a great program. (And there are a lot of other great programs out there, too.)