Conflict Research Society conference 2023
PeaceTech: the future of peacebuilding?
Panel chair: Professor Emeritus Tom Woodhouse
As the Russian/Ukraine conflict shows, warfare is as primitive and brutal as ever and yet increasingly sophisticated, thanks to the role of technology. Within a context of growing global unrest and rapid advancements in technology, peacetech poses both opportunities and challenges for the peacebuilding community. On the one hand, technology can help shift the balance of power by challenging existing social organisation, identities and narratives, reduce costs and access barriers and help to create real long-term benefits for those affected by conflict. On the other hand, it can provide a fertile infrastructure within which misinformation, cyber warfare and surveillance can fester undermining trust in institutions especially when it is already at a low level. Who develops the technology, how it is used, and who can access it are all key questions for the fast-developing field of peacetech, being driven – at least in part – by a start-up tech culture of market forces and ‘fast is good’. This multidisciplinary panel presents four papers that illuminate where technology is or could impact peacebuilding policy, practice and teaching at macro to micro levels, looking both its strengths and inherent vulnerabilities.
Tech and Social Cohesion Landscape Analysis
Professor Lisa Schirch, University of Notre Dame
Technology can scale and disrupt the best and worst of human behaviors, and in response to widespread reports of toxic digital content, Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies are building an expansive “Trust and Safety” infrastructure to reduce digital harms that contribute to polarization, primarily with approaches to content moderation. This paper explores the challenges and opportunities for peacetech to develop more nuanced ideas around tech and social cohesion, and looks ahead at key areas of focus and development for the emerging field of peacetech in the coming years.
Engaging with the military: ‘dual use’ space data for understanding on-the-ground dynamics
Professor Kate Robson Brown, Head of Jean Golding Institute, Turing Lead, University of Bristol
Our everyday technologies emerged from the military decades ago, and now shape lives across the globe. What are current emerging technologies being developed by the military, and how might peacebuilders harness them for their own use? There is momentum growing in the UK around understanding the potential for peacebuilding in ‘dual-use’ space assets - satellites and data sets that serve both civilian functions and military needs. Drawing on experiences in humanitarian work, this paper explores the opportunities, challenges, and implications of these dual-use space technologies for peacebuilding and looks at how they might affect research and practice from micro to macro levels.
PeaceTech for social cohesion in a UK context
Dr Hen Wilkinson, Research Fellow, Jean Golding Institute, University of Bristol; Director, Community Resolve; Co-ordinator of the Interdisciplinary PeaceTech Group
The IPTG defines PeaceTech as an ecosystem of human-technology interactions that supports the attitudes, relationships and institutions that enable living beings to flourish. This presentation touches on two ways in which peacetech could be applied within a UK context, focussing on points of rupture in social trust. It explores how we might use technology to identify points of conflict and to reinforce their social glue. It also introduces the networking event in Manchester, June 2024, for all those working on PeaceTech in the UK.
Peacebuilders of the future: engaging students in developing peacetech
Nabeela Khan, University of Bradford and Professor P Anand, Head of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Bradford
As the place from which many of the peacebuilders of the future will emerge, academic institutions have a responsibility and opportunity to nurture a peacetech culture that prioritises positive social and environmental change. As well as effectively bridging the gap between peacebuilding and technology in their teaching, institutions need to take the lead in challenging enduring tropes across the peacebuilding field relating to colonialism, English language preference, Northern-centrism, infrastructural power and non-recognition of publications from the South. With this is in mind, this discussion explores the role academic settings can, and should, play in developing the capacity of students and scholars to engage in a critical scrutiny of PeaceTech while embracing this new direction for peacebuilding.