JCRS Networks are developed on multiple levels, starting with a close cooperation with other faculties, centers and institutes at the FSU Jena, reaching a worldwide dimension, in a constant and productive exchange with universities and NGOs from the five continents.
The International Association for Reconciliation Studies (IARS) aims at building bridges and promoting a dialogue across different approached to reconciliation to verify and further develop the understanding of reconciliation, explore the variability and commonality in reconciliation processes, and to endorse varied approaches to reconciliation. It recognizes that reconciliation processes play a major role in building long-lasting peace within and across boundaries, restoring and transforming relationships in the aftermath of conflict, and disrupting cycles of violence.
The members of the IARS share a vision that reconciliation is much more than a cessation of violence and hostilities; it requires the participation of the parties involved in the conflict to come together to redefine their relationship and create an environment where cooperation and peaceful coexistence are the operative norms within society.
The International Association for Reconciliation Studies concentrates on reconciliation in divided societies and between nations accruing on an interpersonal, intergroup, and international levels and promotes complex, theory-based, indigenous, and faith-based approaches that address justice, reparations, mercy, apology, forgiveness, and shared identity. To advance the design and implementation of reconciliation processes, the IARS searches for various social conditions for the imagination and achievement of reconciliation, advancing theory and bridging it with practice.
We also expect that the International Association for Reconciliation Studies will help understand and improve international relations by going beyond the conventionally fundamental factors of politics, power, interest and international law toward underlining the role of human’s memories, emotions, values, and morality in mobilizing people for conflicts or reconciliations, in strengthening civilian networks to sustain human rights, and in contributing to mutual respect between nations in the age of globalization and democratization.
Our hope that our collective approach to reconciliation studies will create a basis for cooperative cultural and educational policy toward a common citizenship in the globe, which would be the next immediate step for a shared approach to such global issues, such as environment, infectious disease, and poverty.
The Academic Alliance for Reconciliation Studies in the Middle East and Northern Africa (AARMENA) is an alliance of universities and other higher educational institutions, scholars, and academics willing to do joint research and to build up teaching programs and curriculums in Reconciliation Studies as Multi-inter-disciplinary Research. Alternatively, to Integrate the new curriculums into their academic programs as in program courses, and development of master degrees, in their educational, academic degrees.
AARMENA is initiating the means to strengthening the ties between higher education institutions in Europe and the higher education institutions in the Islamic MENA Region and to fostering of academic reconciliation studies programs that will enhance cultural dialogue orientations in teaching programs on reconciliation studies, interactively benefiting scholars, students and young academics from Europe and Partner countries in the Islamic MENA region.
AARMENA would exploit research and teaching programs on reconciliation studies through exchange scholarly work between academics by stimulating:
1. Strengthening university cooperation by doing an event that corresponds to signing the memorandum of understanding between universities;
2. Doing local and international workshops on reconciliation studies between professors and new academics in the field;
3. Developing a joint symposium, summers school, curriculum on reconciliation studies;
4. Integrating courses in the teaching programs of the program countries;
5. Joint publications and a new perspective to develop joint research.
The programs would influence the integration of those teaching programs to be integrated within the academic programs in the partner higher education insinuations in the partner country. The academic universities and institutions that are part of the AARMENA that enhance cooperation and dialogue orientation with academic institutions on building reconciliation studies programs and dialogue culture orientations in reconciliation studies within the Higher Education Institutions in the MENA region.
The following universities are members of the AARMENA-2018 project:
AARMENA Institutes that are also collaborating to develop cultural heritage and social inclusions and dialogue orientation workshop in the Islamic world are as follows:
AARMENA is meant to become a sustainable organization to foster sustainable reconciliation in the MENA region and to become a driving force for academic development in interdisciplinary research and endure reconciliation where ever it is needed.
The Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies at Friedrich Schiller University has the following objectives to be achieved from the Project Dialogue with the Islamic world (Project):
- To have academic research on teaching methods on reconciliation studies;
- To develop a curriculum on reconciliation studies, that can be used by AARMENA members of higher educational institutions and to integrate teaching programs in their universities as a course or part of the master program, or a Ph.D. Program;
- To have a joint conference to develop joint publications on reconciliation in the MENA region;
- Dialogue with the Muslim world, to strengthen international cooperation between the members and to present all the scholarly work that has been done in the project;
- Universities and researchers to get more funding and advance in reconciliation studies in the middle of conflicts in the MENA Region;
- To research and develop teaching programs on reconciliation studies as an interdisciplinary approach;
- To integrate reconciliation studies as a topic in a master's program in the MENA region;
- The promotion of cultural dialogue and strengthen international cooperation with the Muslim world through academic work by visiting and signing a memorandum of understanding and developing workshops, summer schools, conferences together;
- Sustainably modernize in technological teaching in the member universities, advancing digital humanities program on teaching reconciliation studies, such as online courses and workshops between members of the AAREMENA with member universities and teaching how to teach and integrate research on common ground on teachings of reconciliation studies;
- Provide targeted support for qualified young academics from the regions while ensuring gender equality;
- Establish Joint research projects and joint program teaching. The development of a vast knowledge-based society on reconciliation studies (AARMENA).
For more information for cooperating in the AARMENA project, please contact the project coordinator Dr. Phil. Iyad AlDajani by email: a.aldajani@uni-jena.de
Website: https://www.aarmena.uni-jena.de/
There is a major discrepancy between the eminent significance of recent post-conflict reconciliation between such countries as Germany, France, Israel, Poland and other European countries on the one side and the scientific identification and validation of best practices of reconciliation (BPR). Our various studies have concluded that reconciliation has a major impact on the development of societal and political relationships between conflicting groups and States. Reconciliation helps to prevent future violent conflicts and fosters trust and cooperation, thus, benefiting the relationship on the individual-psychological and the social, cultural and the economic level. While politicians, NGOs, and other civil society actors are aware of the potential reconciliation has to overcome enmity and improve relations on a sustained basis, thorough and wide-spread research is still needed to validate reconciliation practices and make the research results accessible to the world at large.
The ECRR is a network of excellent international scientists concerned with reconciliation strategies. The aim is to build an internationally spreading and cooperating scientific center for conflict management, reconciliation strategies and remembrance cultures for the Saale-region and for Germany as a whole. Possible options for an ECRR office, besides Jena, are Halle, Berlin, or Brussels, among others. The International Workshop "Conflict Resolution, Remembrance and Justice" with the International Max Planck Research School on Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment of the Halle University (Prof. Ralph Buchenhorst; Cultural Anthropology) and JCRS (Prof. Martin Leiner) on the 16.-18.07.2014 has been the first of its kind dealing with inner-German reconciliation. The JCRS states that it has begun work along with George Mason University and Seoul National University to jointly develop a knowledge management data base covering worldwide reconciliation efforts. The center's skills and responsibilities are devided equally between the universities of Halle and Jena with the JCRS.
It is furthermore supported by the following institutions (alphabetical order of the professors, core members):
Partners:
The ECRR will be an international consortium that shall be open to researchers and institutions worldwide, assuming they are willing and able to contribute to the research goals in a significant way.
Already now, the Core Group members individually are connected to a number of reconciliation researchers and universities around the World which could be the first candidates for membership in the consortium.
Key issues:
- Which reconciliation practices have worked in which context?
- Which practices have not worked and why not?
- How can reconciliation practices be improved?
- Which practices can be recommended in an actual situation?
While researchers around the world already work together on an ad hoc basis on individual reconciliation methods, the necessary systematic, coordinated, and concentrated examination and validation of reconciliation practices re-quire an organized structure of international cooperation such as that of an international consortium.Such consortium would also help gain acceptance by political leaders of reconciliation methods as a valuable tool for the conduct of international relations, a tool that political elites often ignore or unaware of.
Areas:
- Apologies;
- (Youth) encounter program;
- Common school book projects;
- Common film, medias, arts productions enhancing peace and under-standing;
- Reconciliation through events in sport and culture;
- Commemorations, Memorials;
- Historical commissions;
- Symbolic walks, pilgrimages;
- Truth and Reconciliation commissions;
- Voluntary work, voluntary acts of reparation;
- Help in situations of natural disasters;
- City twinning.
The Netzwerk Versöhnungsforschung im Deutschsprachigen Raum connects scholars from many disciplines working on reconciliation studies in the German-speaking area, and meets once a year. The first meeting took place at JCRS in 2017:
The Erasmus+ key objectives are:
Strengthening of National Research Capacity on Policy, Conflict Resolution, and Reconciliation (PEACE)
Developing researchers' skills and capabilities on conflict resolution and Reconciliation;
Strengthening strategic partnerships and networking with leading conflict resolution centers, political strategists, and institutions;
Promoting interdisciplinary research related to conflict resolution and Reconciliation (e.g., political science, international relations, politics, and law, etc.).
1. Stengthening Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation in the Higher Education Institutions in Palestine
Partners are:
2. Academic Alliance for Reconciliation in the Field of Higher Education in Peace, Conflict Transformation, and Reconciliation Studies in the Middle East and North Africa AARMENA
Partners are
The JCRS develops both theoretical approaches and pragmatic strategies, in constant dialogue with academic partners from all over the world:
The JCRS develops both theoretical approaches and pragmatic strategies, in constant dialogue with NGOs partners from all over the world:
