[[[Dean's Fellowship Introduction]]]
Laura Collins was born and raised in Scotland and attended Aberdeen University, graduating with a Joint BA (Honours) in French and International Relations in 2008. Laura is also a graduate of the Joint European MA in Human Rights and Genocide Studies from Kingston University, London. Her MA thesis explored the nexus between religion and genocide and mass atrocities, and examined the potential for religion both in its institutional and theological frameworks to play a role in the prevention and mitigation of atrocity crimes.Laura joins the S-CAR communinty as the Dean's Fellow working for the Program on History, Memory, and Conflict.
Laura’s previous experience includes being involved in developing national and regional policies and tactics for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities at the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, a US based nonprofit organisations that works with governments to increase their domestic and international capacity to prevent genocide and mass atrocities. More recently, Laura assisted in the development of a global parliamentary network for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities at Aegis Trust and acted as the Secretariat to British All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (APPG). During her time at Aegis Trust, Laura encouraged UK parliamentarians and others to identify policy and legislative gaps that they may seek to fill in regard to the prevention of atrocity crimes, supported parliamentarians to increase the effectivenss of their scrutiny of government, and promoted an understaning of the importance of long term approaches to genocide prevention through the creation of national parliamentary mechanisms.
Lisa McLean holds a BA in Political Studies from the University of Manitoba, and in 2013 she received her Master of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies from the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at the University of Manitoba. Lisa began working for the Canadian federal government in 2005, and has worked for the department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) for six years. In this time she worked with the Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program, and more recently shed worked as a Project Officer negotiating and monitoring federal funding arrangements with local service provider organizations to deliver services to newly arrived immigrants in Manitoba.
Lisa has co-authored a chapter on peace studies and feminism in a forthcoming volume on gender and peacebuilding to be published by spring 2015, and has delivered a presentation on feminist and anti-colonial research methodologies at the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID) conference in 2012. She has also been invited to guest lecture at the University of Winnipeg on Canada’s refugee resettlement program and on the findings of her thesis. Lisa’s Master’s thesis focused on the challenges faced by newcomer women in Winnipeg, Manitoba as well as the ways that newcomer women engage in community-building to pursue positive social change.Moving forward, Lisa is interested in furthering her knowledge in the areas of feminism, gender, and violence with a particular interest in theories of security and reproductive justice.
Jessica Smith holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with minors in Spanish and Psychology, as well as a Master of Arts in Social Justice and Human Rights, both from Arizona State University. She joins the S-CAR community as the Dean’s Fellow for the Center for the Study of Narrative and Conflict Resolution.Most recently Jessica worked with the Gender Advisor for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Amman, Jordan where she assisted with Agency-wide activities aimed at promoting and monitoring gender sensitive programming and interventions in line with international frameworks for gender equality. Prior to this post, Jessica was the Program Manager of the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research at Arizona State University where her research focused on domestic sex trafficking. Jessica collaborated on multiple projects involving the use of innovative research methodologies designed to contribute to and expand the sex trafficking knowledge base. Jessica also co-facilitated a weekly trauma-focused psycho-education group with sex trafficking survivors and led therapeutic art workshops at a safe house for sex trafficked adult women.
As a PhD student at S-CAR, Jessica would like to pursue research that contributes to the advancement of policy and practice that supports the inclusion and active participation of women in post-conflict processes. She is interested in ethnographic research that incorporates the use of photography and narrative as means for exploring gendered dimensions of conflict. She is drawn to non-traditional research methodologies that amplify the voices of marginalized populations and create spaces for individuals to press for change on their own behalf.
Jeremy Tomlinson is a British national but also holds a US passport. He has lived in Cambodia since he completed an MA in Post-war Recovery Studies at the University of York (UK) in 2011. For the past two and a half years, he has focused professionally on the Myanmar peace process. As Documentation and Learning Officer at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS), he undertook independent research, oversaw the organization’s publication agenda, and assisted the Myanmar peace process support program. During this time he also wrote and presented a paper on international third party support of the Myanmar peace process at the 1st Peace Practitioners Research Conference in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Subsequently, Jeremy has worked as an independent consultant for Plan International, KHANA, and the Foundation for Local Development. These assignments have included research projects, workshop coordination, conflict analysis, and, most notably, backstopping the Ethnic Peace Resource Project, Phases I and II, funded by the Norwegian and Swiss Ministries of Foreign Affairs. Jeremy completed a BA in International Studies from the University of East Anglia (UK) and the International Baccalaureate (I.B.) program at the United World College of the Atlantic (UWCAC ‘05-‘07). He has lived in Cambodia, India, Nigeria, South Sudan, the UK and the USA. Outside of his academic interests, which include mediation, negotiation, peace processes and transition, Jeremy is an avid motorcyclist.
Laura Villanueva has recently come to S-CAR after 10 years of peacebuilding project management, development, and practice in the field. Her experience and practice began at the Basque Peace Institute in Gernika. She then went on to design and implement a people-to-people peacebuilding process, which is on-going and co-located in Japan and the Middle East. Laura also worked and practiced her approach in other locations in Europe utilizing culture as a key peacebuilding entry point. For her most recent project, she has co-founded a women’s NGO in Mexico, which is preparing to train women as peacebuilders.
Laura is pursuing her PhD at S-CAR to refine and build on her practice and conceptual work on a Japanese grassroots peacebuilding model. Specifically this is a Japan-based peacebuilding model that has the potential to serve as an innovative people-to-people application for use in different areas of conflict. For example, natural resources conflicts and deep-rooted intractable conflicts in general. In terms of solutions, the model may apply as well to the creation of new social values that can reduce tensions during peacebuilding efforts. Also in this regard, Laura is examining the epigenetics nexus of love and conflict transformation in connection with on-going processes in the field. Her overall objective is to better equip theorists and practitioners with tools to establish love conceptually and practically as a peacebuilding fundamental.