This seminar presents findings from Juliet Millican’s new book Universities and Conflict: The Role of Higher Education in Peacebuilding and Resistance, published by Routledge in October 2017, which uses a series of case studies to examine the roles played by universities during situations of conflict, peacebuilding and resistance and opens a discussion about the ways in which we, as teachers, students or administrators might respond.
In addition to their core roles of teaching and research universities are often said to have a social purpose, responding to the needs of their localities and the critical questions of their times. But what role do or should universities play when the environment they are in is involved in conflict or subject to an oppressive regime?
How might academics, as researchers or as experts in so many different disciplines, offer practical help to communities in crises, or students as emerging citizens have a say in the development of a democracy?
About the speaker:
Juliet Millican is currently working as a research associate at IDS. Having recently joined the IDS team she brings with her ten years’ experience as an academic director of a community university partnership programme, and a background in adult learning for development.
She is particularly interested in engaged learning and the social impact of research and has worked in many parts of Africa and the Middle East with some experience in India, Myanmar and Nepal. Her current research area involves the potential of social engagement in higher education and its role in conflict and migration. Her PhD (2008) involved action research into student community engagement in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a city still divided by conflict. She also works on behalf of the Lemon Tree Trust in Syrian refugee camps in Iraq.
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