Graduate Student, School of Political Science and International Studies
Phd Candidate
Thesis Title: From the Margins: Displaced Young People and an Embodied Everyday Peace in Colombia
About
I am a PhD Candidate in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
My research seeks ways of better engaging young people affected by conflict in the process of building peace. A growing number of protracted conflicts globally require a rethinking of what peace might look like and what it means to discuss a ‘politics of everyday peace’ and how 'the everday' appears in these contexts. My research engages with displaced young people in Colombia to argue that young people’s understanding of the violences that surround them are complicated and engaged. It is in this accounting of multiple violences,—and in finding forms of resistance, resilience, and negotiation amongst those who experience them—that an embodied politics of everyday peace can begin to take shape.
During 2010 I conducted fieldwork with young people living in an 'informal' barrio community to the south of the capital, Bogota. My research is based on several months of participant observation and interviews primarily with a group of young people aged between 11 and 17. It is in their accounts of their community, their lives and the challenges they face that my research finds its grounding.
