19.04.2021 Farewell to Dr. Joana Amaral

Dr Joana Amaral taught and conducted her PhD and postdoctoral research on peace negotiation and mediation at the Center for Conflict Studies from 2013 to 2021. Her research focused on the study of peace negotiations and mediation in Colombia, Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Sierra Leone. During the course of her research she engaged with numerous negotiators, stakeholders and civil society activist in several peace processes and collaborated with different peace institutions and NGOs around the globe, such as the United Nations University Policy Center, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Cyprus, the German-Colombian Peace Institute CAPAZ in Bogota, and The Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace Security and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland.

During her time at the Center for conflict studies, her research received funding from multiple institutions, such as the DAAD and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Her postdoctoral research on the motivations behind the public disclosure of progress in peace negotiations in Colombia and Northern Ireland was fully funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research.

In 2016 she was granted the Kenneth Boulding award from the International Studies Association (ISA) Peace Studies section, for which she was elected as an executive commissioner in 2019. The author of Making Peace with Referendums: Cyprus and Northern Ireland (Syracuse University Press: New York, 2019), her publications focus on several issues related to peace negotiations, such as public communication, peace referendums, the inclusion of armed and civil opposition movements in peace negotiations, civil society inclusion, and the use of sanctions with mediation. Currently she is the Project Manager for the Negotiation Support for Resistance and Liberation Movements project at the Berghof Foundation in Berlin.

The Center for Conflict Studies wishes her all the best for the future!