Lisa Schirch is the is the Richard G. Starmann, Sr. Professor of the Practice of Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. She has 30 years of experience in peacebuilding research, policy advocacy, practice, and teaching. A political scientist by training, she earned her PhD in 1989 from George Mason University’s Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. She is also Senior Research Fellow for the Toda Peace Institute where she directs the Institute’s “Technology and Peacebuilding” programme to explore the impact of social media technology on conflict dynamics and its potential for improved social cohesion. A former Fulbright Fellow in East and West Africa, Lisa is the author of eleven books focused on locally-led peacebuilding, and the role of social media in peace and peacebuildng (looking at both the bad and the good aspects of that).
The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field
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Beyond Intractability
Beyond Intractability
The Intractable Conflict Challenge
Our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. Solving today's tough problems depends upon finding better ways of dealing with these conflicts. More...
Selected Recent BI Posts
Including Hyper-Polarization Posts
- Better Together America: Another Example of Massively Parallel Democracy Building at Work -- A report on Better Together America's first Hub Accelerator Workshop -- an inspiring get together of people from around the United States who are working in a wide variety of ways to strengthen civic engagement in their local communities.
- Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of May 4, 2025 -- Insightful readings for this week.
- Things to Think About -- Alone and Together - Part 2 -- Two more interesting exercises to think about ways of constructively approaching intractable conflicts and the role of intervenors in those conflicts.
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Conflict Frontiers
A free, open, online seminar exploring new approaches for addressing difficult and intractable conflicts. Major topic areas include:
Scale, Complexity, & Intractability
Massively Parallel Peacebuilding
Conflict Fundamentals
An look at to the fundamental building blocks of the peace and conflict field covering both “tractable” and intractable conflict.
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