Stefanie Kappler

Biography

Stefanie Kappler joined Durham University in 2015. She holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews. Stefanie previously acted as Director of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Centre for War and Peace Studies (Liverpool Hope University). She is particularly interested in the contested and transformative nature of local imaginations of peace and has conducted fieldwork in Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Cyprus, Brussels, Northern Ireland, Kosovo and the Basque Country. Her main research interests include critical approaches to peacebuilding, specifially with respect to the Balkans, Cyprus and South Africa as well as the spatial and temporal dimensions of international intervention. Her research is driven by an interest in what constitutes agency and how we can come to an understanding of peacebuilding agents that avoids their essentialisation and takes account of their multidimensional character. To engage with this question, Stefanie has investigated the role that artists can play in peacebuilding processes to break through established categories and provide narratives that challenge dominant discourses. Stefanie is course director of the MSc in Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding as well as the MSc in Defence, Development & Diplomacy.

Research Interest

Peacebuilding, The European Union and Peacebuilding, Spaces and places of peace and conflict, Research Methods in Peace Studies, Peace and the Arts, Memory and Conflict, Narrative Approaches, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Cyprus, Northern Ireland.