Deliberating conflict resolution and peacebuilding: challenges of political communication in conflict-affected societies
Speakers
Deliberation, as a form of well-reasoned and respectful communication, can play an important role in conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Recent experiments involving mini-publics, national dialogues, digital engagement, and mass mobilisation for peacemaking have sought to jump-start deliberation as a means of advancing peace. But, assuming such deliberation is possible, what benefits can it generate, for whom, and how? Can it withstand the challenges of weak democracy and polarisation in these contexts? The panelists will explore the opportunities for, and obstacles to, deliberation in conflict-affected societies, drawing on examples from the Western Balkans, Northern Ireland, and beyond.
Meet our speakers and chair
Ron Levy is a Professor at the Australian National University’s College of Law, Governance, and Policy. His research draws on the political theory of deliberative democracy to examine how deeply contentious political and constitutional problems can be more effectively managed. He is the author and editor of several books, including Deliberative Peace Referendums (Oxford University Press, 2021), co-authored with Ian O’Flynn and Hoi L. Kong, and The Cambridge Handbook of Deliberative Constitutionalism, co-edited with Hoi L. Kong, Graeme Orr, and Jeff King (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Allison McCulloch is a Professor at Brandon University (Canada). Her research considers the politics of ethnically divided societies, peace processes, and democratization in post-conflict states. She is interested in how power-sharing governments handle political crises, the incentive structures for ethnopolitical moderation and extremism that power-sharing offers, and how power-sharing arrangements can be made more inclusive of identities beyond the ethnonational divide. She is the author of Gender, Peace, and Power-Sharing, with Siobhan Byrne (University of Toronto Press, 2026) and co-editor of several volumes including, Power-Sharing in the Global South: Patterns, Practices and Potential (Palgrave Macmillan 2024).
Dr Ivor Sokolić is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Hertfordshire and a Visiting Fellow at the European Institute, LSE. He is the co-editor of Deliberation and Anti-Deliberation in the Western Balkans (Palgrave 2026). He contributes to the ERC funded project “Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding: From Static to Dynamic Discourses across National, Ethnic, Gender and Age Groups”, which examines transitional justice processes across the former Yugoslavia. In 2023 he received an AHRC Early-Stage Impact Award together with Dr Elisa Randazzo, to work on the project "Exploring the Impact of Participatory Post-Conflict Performance Arts Research: The Case of Kosovo". The project aims to explore new methodologies to study how ethnic groups interact after conflict.
Elodie Douarin is Professor of Economics and Society at University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Her research explores social norms and personal attitudes, the events that shape them, and their effects on economic and political behaviours. She has published on the impact of war on livelihood strategies, and on war victimisation and political participation in Kosovo. She is co-editor with Julie Litchfield of Gendered Legacies of Violence on Pro-Sociality and Political Participation - An Empirical Exploration of Comparative Case-studies (UCL Press, 2027).
Chair:
Denisa Kostovicova is a Professor of Global Politics at European Institute and Lead of the LSEE – Research on South East Europe, Hellenic Observatory, both at London School of Economics and Political Science. She is an award-winning scholar of conflict and peace processes with a particular interest in post-conflict justice and memory politics from the perspective of political communication. She is the author of Reconciliation by Stealth: How People Talk about War Crimes (Cornell University Press 2023) and co-editor of Rethinking Reconciliation and Transitional Justice After Conflict (Routledge 2018) and Deliberation and Anti-Deliberation in the Western Balkans (Palgrave Macmillan 2026), among several other books. Her research contributes regularly to policy discussions at the EU, the UN, and in the UK.
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