The International Association for Reconciliation Studies (IARS) invites you to join us for the 4th annual global conference in Kibuye, Rwanda, held from 1-5 August.
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The deadline for abstract submission has passed. During the conference, in-person presentations must be no longer than 20 minutes and online presentations no longer than 10 minutes. Scholars will also be invited to
submit their papers for publication in 2023 to the Journal of Reconciliation Studies, the new peer-reviewed IARS online journal.

Please write to the organizing committee with any questions at iars.rwanda2023@gmail.com

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Organizing Committee

Prof. Dr. Martin Leiner (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena/JCRS)

Dr. Maximilian Schell (Ruhr-University Bochum)
Dr. Colleen Alena O’Brien (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena/JCRS)

Dr. Pascal Bataringaya (Presbyterian Church Rwanda / PIASS Rwanda)
Dr. Laura Villanueva (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena/JCRS)
Prof. Dr. Toyomi Asano (Waseda University Tokyo)
Prof. Dr. Karina Korestolina (George Mason University)
Rev. Ralf Häußler (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena/JCRS)
PD Dr. Christine Schliesser (Universität Freiburg/University Zürich)

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About IARS

Reconciliation studies places a stronger focus on the relational aspect and thus emotional and cognitive factors for conflict prevention, transformation and resolution – compared to "conventional" peace approaches – with the question of structural and supra-individual conditions also being an integrative part of the concepts. Peace can only be sustainable if conflicts are dealt with at their roots; peace should thus be qualified by reconciliation and, in the best case, lead to the restoration of relations between all conflict participants at different levels. As these arguments and models gain increasing plausibility against the background of repetitive conflict cycles and protracted wars, reconciliation research is an approach that is growing in importance. This is reflected in the establishment of new reconciliation research centers and
programs at universities such as Bonn (2022), Flensburg (2021), Winchester (2016), Tokyo: Waseda University (2020), and Gaza: Al Azzhar University (2022).

 

An important driving force of these theoretical and practical conceptualization and localization processes of reconciliation studies is the "International Association for Reconciliation Studies" (IARS), founded in 2020, which creates networks and facilitates discourse spaces on the relevance and perspectives of reconciliation studies at the highest academic level and with the participation of renowned international researchers. IARS is the editor of the Journal for Reconciliation Studies, which will be published for the first time in 2023, and has organized annual conferences in international contexts since 2020 (2020: Jena; Kharkiv and Kyev Regional Conference, Ukraine, 2021: Tokyo, Japan, 2022: Washington D.C.).

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About the Conference

The IARS holds annual international conferences in different contexts, mapping and developing current perspectives of the relatively young research approach of "reconciliation studies". The conferences offer a space in which case studies as well as theories, models and conceptions are brought into conversation with current fields of discourse (postcolonial studies, ecological justice and sustainability studies, affect and emotion studies, etc.). The conference is genuinely inter- and transdisciplinary including approaches from psychology, philosophy, education, sociology, economics, law, political science, history, economics, regional studies, communication studies, art as well as theology.

The 2023 IARS Annual World Conference on Reconciliation will be held on the African continent for the first time. The special consideration of African approaches and theologies of reconciliation (especially from the Great Lakes region), which have so far found too little entry into global discourses, will be ensured both by a strong representation of African scholars and by three separate panels. The global academic landscape is still subject to epistemic, economic and social power asymmetries that need to be addressed at different levels of the conference.

 

Information about traveling to/in Rwanda

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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   The Conference takes place at Hotel Bethany Kibuye.

There will be a bus transporting participants from Kigali (airport) to Kibuye on 1 August 2023 and back to Kigali (airport) on 5 August 2023.

 

For conference participants who arrive in Kigali one or two days before the conference, there is a discounted room contingent at the Iris Guest House in Kigali. The rooms cost 50.000 Rwandan Francs per night (instead of 70.000 Rwandan Francs). All accommodation costs incurred before the start of the conference must be paid by the participants themselves. More information about the Iris Guest House here. If you book a room, please mention (via E-Mail) that you are one of the conference guests.

More information coming soon.

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