Research Group Buckley-Zistel

The team's thematic focus includes critical research on transitional justice and dealing with the past as well as conflict transformation. In addition to different cases and mechanisms or initiatives, our projects focus on a wide variety of actors. We consider how violence is dealt with, for instance, through research on conceptualizations of justice and responsibility for political violence, on coming to terms with sexualized violence, on narratives about violence and repression, or through perpetrator research. Memory studies, with a focus on memory politics and the politics of history, monuments and spaces of remembrance or cinematic representations of conflict, also plays a central and related role.

In addition, we conduct research on peacebuilding and internationalized transformation processes and on the nexus of peace or conflict and such issues as human rights, refugees, and development cooperation. In our research, we mainly use qualitative research methods, employing different approaches and theories, which we develop further through our work. These include, among others, spatial perspectives on peace and conflict, feminist approaches, postcolonial theories, theories of international relations, diffusion theories as well as narrative theories and methods. In addition to research within German society, our current projects focus on cases within the MENAT region, Eastern Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Across all these projects, it is important to us to give questions of research ethics careful consideration.