6th Annual IARS Conference
Seoul, Republic of Korea | July 2025
The 6th Annual Conference of the International Association for Reconciliation Studies (IARS), held in Seoul, Republic of Korea from July 14th to 18th, 2025, successfully concluded thanks to the participation and support of all attendees.
Following our previous gathering in Italy, the Seoul Conference brought together a diverse community of scholars, practitioners, and activists to reflect on the challenges and possibilities of reconciliation in a world marked by deepening division. With Korea's long history of colonization, war, dictatorship, and political conflict, the setting offered a meaningful context for engaging with global perspectives and local experiences of reconciliation.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to all who joined us in Seoul and contributed to the success of this year's conference. We look forward to seeing you again at the next IARS gathering.
Mission Statement
The International Association for Reconciliation Studies was established in 2020. Our aims are in building bridges and promoting dialogue across different approaches to reconciliation to verify and further develop the understanding of reconciliation, explore the variability and commonality in reconciliation processes, and to endorse varied approaches to reconciliation. It recognizes that reconciliation processes play a major role in building long-lasting peace within and across boundaries, restoring and transforming relationships in the aftermath of conflict, and disrupting cycles of violence.
The members of the IARS share a vision that reconciliation is much more than a cessation of violence and hostilities; it requires the participation of the parties involved in the conflict to come together to redefine their relationship and create an environment where cooperation and peaceful coexistence are the operative norms within society.
The International Association for Reconciliation Studies concentrates on reconciliation in divided societies and between nations accruing on an interpersonal, intergroup, and international levels and promotes complex, theory-based, indigenous, and faith-based approaches that address justice, reparations, mercy, apology, forgiveness, and shared identity. To advance the design and implementation of reconciliation processes, the IARS searches for various social conditions for the imagination and achievement of reconciliation, advancing theory and bridging it with practice.
We also expect that the International Association for Reconciliation Studies will help understand and improve international relations by going beyond the conventionally fundamental factors of politics, power, interest and international law toward underlining the role of human’s memories, emotions, values, and morality in mobilizing people for conflicts or reconciliations, in strengthening civilian networks to sustain human rights, and in contributing to mutual respect between nations in the age of globalization and democratization.
Our hope that our collective approach to reconciliation studies will create a basis for cooperative cultural and educational policy toward a common citizenship in the globe, which would be the next immediate step for a shared approach to such global issues, such as environment, infectious disease, and poverty.
