2004-2005 Peace Scholars
Peace Scholar dissertation fellowships are awarded annually to outstanding doctoral students enrolled in recognized programs in U.S. universities. The fellowships support one year of dissertation research and writing on topics addressing the sources, nature, prevention, and management of international conflict. For further information please consult the Peace Scholar Overview page.
Lori Allen
Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
Suffering Through a Nationalist Uprising: Violence, Victimization, and Human Rights in Palestinian Politics
Lori Allen is a doctoral student in the department of anthropology at the University of Chicago. She is writing her dissertation after completing two years of ethnographic field research among Palestinians in the West Bank. Proficient in Arabic, she has also interviewed many victims of rights violations and the families of "martyrs." Her main goal is to understand why victimization and certain iconic forms of violence have become central to Palestinian national identity and moral-political discourse. She also seeks to explain how these elements affect the way the current uprising is being played out. Allen argues that the international human rights community has played an important role in valorizing suffering within the Palestinian cause, and that this has contributed to the reduction of opportunities for political solutions to the conflict. Allen is writing her dissertation in Astoria, New York.
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Séverine Autesserre
Department of Politics, New York University
The Politics of the Peace Process in the Eastern Congo
Séverine Autesserre is a doctoral student specializing in international relations in the department of politics at New York University. Autesserre's analysis of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) seeks to explain why the national peace process, and the international peacebuilders who direct it, tolerates an absence of real settlement at the local level. She sees three possible causes for the normalization of local violence within the peace process: international peacebuilders intend to establish peace but are constrained; vested interests lead peacebuilders to ignore local violence; and misrepresentations prevent peacebuilders from addressing local disruptions in the peace process. In particular, her work addresses a central conundrum of the peace process in Eastern Congo in which continuing local conflict still blocks substantive progress despite important developments at the national level such as the formation of a unified government, preparation of democratic elections, and the organization of international conferences. Autesserre's Peace Scholar award will allow her to continue her field interviews in the DRC, Belgium, France, New York, and Washington, D.C.
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Belete Bizuneh
Department of History, Boston University
Pastoralists, States, and Violence Along the Ethiopian-Kenyan-Somali Borderland, ca. 1897-1980s
Belete Bizuneh is a doctoral student with the department of history at Boston University. Bizuneh will study the role of violence in the transformation of the lives of pastoralists in the Borana borderlands, a strategic region that sits astride the international boundary between Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. This border has been the scene of recurring warfare among pastoral groups divided by ethnicity and religion. Bizuneh argues that the underlying cause of the conflict is an alien system of spatial organization that was imposed on the indigenous people. When the strategic location facilitated access to small automatic weapons, there was a shift in interethnic and intergenerational relations. The resulting conflict has led to the widespread destruction of property, a migration of foreign insurgents, and displacement of the local population, who have now been dependent on relief for thirty years. His study is unique in that he will rely on largely unutilized Ethiopian oral and archival sources, supplemented by Kenyan sources. Bizuneh will use his Peace Scholar award to conduct archival work in Ethiopia and Kenya.
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Karrin Hanshew
Department of History, University of Chicago
Negotiating Terror: Political Violence and Democracy in 1970s West Germany
Karrin Hanshew is a doctoral student specializing in modern Europe with the department of history at the University of Chicago. Hanshew is examining the role of terrorism in West Germany during the 1970s in Germans' understanding and involvement in democracy. Specifically, she will examine terrorism's role in generating the Wertewandel ("shift in values") that occurred in the 1980s, when the Christian Democrats came to power and the center-left political culture collapsed. She argues that terrorism changed the Social Democrats' belief that strong state power is a threat to democracy, caused the radical and extra-parliamentary left to renounce their support of political violence, showed the conservatives that democracy is capable of containing terrorism and that limits should be placed on state power, and changed overall "West German political culture discernibly as a result." Hanshew is writing her dissertation in Chicago based on a combination of extensive archival work and personal interviews.
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Sandra Leavitt
Department of Government, Georgetown University
Between Security and Conflict: Governments and Muslim Minorities in Asia
Sandra Leavitt is a doctoral student in comparative politics and Southeast Asian studies with the department of government at Georgetown University. Her dissertation focuses on the impact of different government policies on the militancy of Islamic resistance movements and the success of their incorporation into Asian societies where they constitute a minority. Cases in her study include China, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Singapore. She characterizes regime policies as either persuasive inducements or coercive punishments and posits that, by the choices they make, governments have considerable influence over whether or not Muslim minorities will cooperate toward nationbuilding or take up arms against the government. Fundamentally, her work examines why governments choose certain policies over others. Leavit will use her Peace Scholar award to collect and analyze quantitative data and conduct field interviews.
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Helen Lennon
Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University
Creating a Witness: Film as Evidence in International War Crimes Tribunals
Helen Lennon is a doctoral student in comparative literature and film at Yale University. Her project examines the use of non-fiction film as proof of atrocities in each of the four war crimes tribunals established in the twentieth century—the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Guided by the statutes, rules, and criminal categories of each tribunal—as well as constantly evolving developments in international criminal law—Lennon's dissertation elaborates on justifications for, and objections to, the admission of non-fiction film as evidence in war crimes trials. Her analysis further considers the function of documentary images in warfare and political propaganda, as well as the power of moving images as an essential mechanism in peace support operations, transitions to democracy, and broader civic discourse. Concurrent to her Ph.D. studies at Yale, Lennon obtained her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002, where she specialized in U.S. criminal law, international human rights and humanitarian law, and trial advocacy. Lennon is writing her dissertation in Washington, D.C.
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Monika Nalepa
Department of Political Science, Columbia University
Shedding the Light: Theory and Practice of Truth Revelation Procedures in Post-Communist Europe
Monika Nalepa is a doctoral student in political science at Columbia University. Nalepa is using four Eastern European case studies (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) to study lustration, with a focus on the range of truth revelation procedures designed to verify whether persons running for public office had worked under the previous communist regimes as informers of the secret political police. She is particularly interested in the politics of how legislation sanctioning such transitional justice procedures came to be adopted. Her dissertation will result in a series of recommendations about how transitional justice mechanisms may be enhanced to improve their impact on long-term reconciliation and democratic stability. Nalepa will combine elite interviewing and public opinion polls, as well as archival research, to test her hypotheses. Nalepa will use her Peace Scholar award to complete her field work and write her dissertation while in Eastern Europe and New York.
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James Rae
Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii
Justice and Reconciliation in Cambodia and East Timor: The Role of Human Rights in UN Peacebuilding Operations
James Rae is a doctoral student in political science, specializing in comparative politics, at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu. His dissertation involves a comparison of UN peacebuilding efforts in Cambodia and East Timor, with special emphasis on the lessons learned about securing justice and reconciliation. He will examine the tensions between the adoption of international human rights standards versus the use of mechanisms influenced by indigenous conceptions of justice and reconciliation. During his fellowship, he will complete his fieldwork in Cambodia and East Timor and then write his dissertation in Honolulu.
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Christiane Wilke
Department of Political Science, New School University
A Belated Vindication of Rights: Criminal Trials for Mass Human Rights Violations and the Tasks of Democratization
Christiane Wilke is a doctoral student in political science at the New School University. Her work examines the theoretical underpinnings of the choices for and against criminal prosecutions in the aftermath of massive human rights violations. She argues that such prosecutions are in fact a crucial component of the process of establishing a society based on the respect for rights. Trials offer a belated vindication of the rights that have been violated. They also acknowledge the victims of human rights violations as persons whose rights were wrongfully harmed. Her argument is based on court decisions, laws, and public debates in three countries. She has completed fieldwork in Argentina, Germany, and South Africa. Wilke's Peace Scholar award will support the writing of her dissertation in New York.
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Caroline Yezer
Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University
Memory and Truth in the Shadow of War: Local and National Reconciliation in the Peruvian Andes
Caroline Yezer is a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at Duke University. Her research examines the local challenges to Peru's recent state-led Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in peasant villages trapped in the primary site of the war between the Peruvian state and Maoist Shining Path rebels. She argues that the truth telling and nation building model on which the TRC was based clashed with the ways that villagers have historically survived the worst war atrocities. Yezer has completed three years of ethnographic fieldwork in Ayacucho, Peru, including interviews with returned refugees, TRC members, NGO representatives, and state aid workers in highland villages. She speaks Spanish and Quechua. During her fellowship, she will return briefly to Peru and subsequently write her dissertation in Durham, North Carolina.
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