Focus Areas
- Building Peace Studies Agendas in the South, imagining pluriversal peace
- Promoting Education for Critical Consciousness in Pakistan
- Building networks to impact education policies
Centre for Critical Peace Studies embraces a very broad definition of peace. Peace is viewed as a process and a struggle towards the mitigation of direct, structural, cultural as well as epistemic violence. We view epistemic violence as a key constituent of structural and cultural violence; hence it remains our main area of focus.
We invite researchers, teachers (especially Social Sciences and Humanities faculty), visiting scholars, doctoral candidates, graduate and undergraduate students, religious scholars, writers, journalists, artists and policy makers, who are interested in exploring the research areas listed below, to join our forum.
Kindly note that following is a tentative and flexible list of research areas we aim to focus. We have an open approach towards ideas, so the following research domains are not meant to be restrictive.
Research Domains
- Exploring avenues for decolonizing knowledge, power and being , imagining and collecting pathways towards Decolonial futures / Charting what decolonizing education/research/universities entail / Dilemmas and challenges of walking the Decolonial pathways and suggestions to overcome them
- Charting Fresh Agendas for Peace Studies ; Questioning universal peace agendas , imagining, developing, collecting, enacting pluriversal peace agendas
- Rethinking Social Sciences and Humanities Education Policies and Practices in Pakistan, the Muslim world and other parts of the Global South,
- Exploring/rethinking Islamic/ madrasa education/divisions in education in the Muslim world
- Exploring indigenous knowledge systems/ research methods, historical connections and encounters between people, ideas, civilizations
- Exploring , mapping questioning multiple forms of epistemic violence and epistemic injustice / proposing clear pathways to undo epistemic violence and injustice
- Issues of structural and cultural violence , marginalization, oppression
- Direct violence, war , genocide and the role of electronic, print, social media , cyber space in war, violence, conflict
- Prolonged conflicts including Afghanistan, Kashmir , Palestine
- Genocide, oppression including Muslims in Myanmar, China , non- Muslim communities within Muslim societies
- Issues of migrants , systemic discrimination, implicit and explicit racism
- Countering / Preventing Violent Extremism , Ideologies and Pedagogies of Oppressions , Ideas and Pedagogies of Liberation
- Issues of Critical Pedagogy/ Critical Peace Education/ Critical Peace Studies/ Critical Security Studies/ Human and Environmental Security
We also seek funding opportunities from sources that allow us the freedom to advance our work in our way.
What we seek at this stage;
- Collaborations for our proposed projects – initially we are planning 1- 2 edited volumes.
- Researchers , faculty members, students/scholars already working (or intending to work) in the aforementioned areas, may join our network ; where we can regularly discuss the works in progress , provide informed peer review, publish developed working papers and include these papers in our conferences / seminars/ webinars for the wider audience
- Religious scholars are welcome on this forum to discuss avenues for collaboration and mutual learning.
- Visiting scholars may join our programs/ seminars and research work
- Writers, journalists, artists may contribute in their own unique ways. We shall be working on short videos, short writing pieces, possibly art exhibits for wider dissemination of ideas in creative ways.
Kindly note: We focus on change in the local context while we stand firm with the global network of scholars who seek change in their locations. The specific changes, we seek mostly relate to our location i.e. Pakistan/ Muslim world, our disciplinary domains i.e. International Relations/Peace Studies (Social Sciences in general) and our profession i.e. Higher education/ universities. So some of our programs may look Pakistan specific/ Politics and Peace specific but we respect, honor and support your struggles in your locations and your domains on this forum, as we seek pluriversal spaces for all.