Mathias is an undergraduate student in the University’s School of International Relations, and has been a member of the Visualising Peace team since Spring 2022.
His research in the Visualising Peace project has been into psychology and peacebuilding, particularly in post-conflict zones. In this presentation, Mathias reflects on his research into psychology theory, international relations, and storytelling in peacebuilding. He translated this research into entries in our Museum of Peace about the intersection of psychology, radicalisation, and peacebuilding in Pakistan, on behavioural psychology, storytelling, and post-conflict recovery in Rwanda, and on the employment of psychological operations to encourage young combatants to defect from the LRA. He has also written on the ‘biology’ of peace-building in this museum entry.
He has also reflected critically on his experiences in the project and how they have stretched his own habits of visualising peace politically, psychologically, and personally.
This research into psychology, storytelling, and political peacebuilding culminated in an in-depth report (below) on current frameworks of peacebuilding and behavioural psychology using a variety of case studies on the local, national, and international scales.