Peace and Politics

I joined the Vertically Integrated Project on “Visualising Peace” in my second semester of uni. Alongside gaining a variety of new perspectives on issues surrounding peace, one of the new inputs I received was an increased sensitivity towards language in connection to peace building and keeping efforts. I’m very interested in how peace manifests in political discussion, which aspects of it are over- and underlit in that context and why that is the case. Furthermore, I am intrigued by the democratic mechanisms that facilitate the possibility to influence perspectives of peace through elections. Hence, I have decided to conduct my research using political manifestos.  In analysing manifestos, I have aimed to seek out diverse approaches to peace and to see whether political parties make the effort to diversify our understandings of peace or adhere to dominant perceptions. This was done through language analysis in the form of word searches and subsequent classification through context. This project aims to shed light both on which areas and perceptions of peace are prioritised within our current political discourse, as well as which perspectives are seen as “the public view of peace” by political parties.  
Kim Wahnke, Visualising Peace student
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Kim is an undergraduate in the School of Philosophy at the University and has been a member of the Visualising Peace project since Spring 2023. Her research has focused on political parties and their relationships to peace and peacebuilding, particularly in the UK. She discusses this research in a blog on our website, and draws on her findings in an in-depth report on peaceful language in the manifestos of five UK political parties, which you can explore further below. 

Our research into peace and politics has benefited enormously from visits by Chris Law MP, Wendy Chamberlain MP, and Stephen Gethins (former MP), and from conversations with senior British diplomat Sir Geoffrey Adams and conflict and referendums specialist Quintin Oliver, who ran the 1998 Good Friday Agreement Referendum’s YES Campaign.

Focusing on diplomacy, Visualising Peace student Jakub Lewandowki has explored the differences between public diplomacy and political diplomacy, underlining the importance of involving diverse voices in diplomatic practice in this presentation. He has also got us thinking about the merits of citizen diplomacy via this museum entry on gastrodiplomacy.

Several Visualising Peace students have researched past and present politics in Northern Ireland, and Harris Siderfin recorded this podcast interview with Lord Jim Wallace to explore the attention paid to peace and peacebuilding within British politics. Some of our research on peace and politics connects up with our work on peace debates; and student Madighan Ryan has also got us thinking about civil resistance and peacebuilding.

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