Conversations

International Catalan Institute for Peace – Build Peace 2025
Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Spain

“Confronting Erasure: How to Prevent Idetity-Based Mass Violence in Cities” brings together voices working on the front lines of memory, trauma, activism, and identity. Through six short talks, it will explore how histories are preserved or erased, how communities confront trauma, and how memory practices shape collective futures. Rachel Locke, a volume co-editor and co-founder of Peace in Our Cities.

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The Bristol, UK, launch event at Empire Fighting Chance will highlight effective local solutions that generate safe and supportive communities for all young people by addressing fundamental, structural challenges they face. With insights from Bristol and other communities globally, this event will explore specific practical examples of how evidence-based, innovative practice can reduce and prevent violence while shaping safer, more inclusive communities.

“Conversations About Roots, Ties, and Flows in Identity-Based Mass Violence“ celebrates the publication of Identity-Based Mass Violence in Urban Contexts: Uncovered. It will explore the motivations for the book and how the volume’s creation cultivated ideas, commitments, care, and solidarity. It will also delve into unexpected connections between people and places that emerged in the process, including how making meaning after loss and trauma shape us as people and as professionals.

Facilitated by contributor Ariana Markowitz with contributors Shukria Dellawar, Rachel Locke, and Rose Mbone.

This invitation-only event will bring together senior leaders—including practitioners, policymakers, police commissioners, and mayors—alongside renowned violence-reduction experts and thought leaders to examine how leadership at city, regional, and national levels can challenge the status quo to move beyond crisis management to directly addressing the core drivers of identity-based violence in cities.

On November 12, 2025, we marked the launch of the edited volume, “Identity-Based Mass Violence in Urban Contexts: Uncovered.” The virtual launch event invited participants to learn about the launch of a book born from community and care; the global team that made it possible; the stories, wisdom, and courage that shape its pages; a groundbreaking blend of peer-reviewed analysis and lived testimony—bringing academic rigor and personal truth together in one volume. Participants had the opportunity to meet the Editors and Contributors, hear behind-the-scenes stories, and be part of the next chapter of this living, breathing conversation.

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“Whose voices are being heard when we’re talking about violence?” This panel discussion at the University of Oxford will spotlight the different voices that are at the heart of the work behind the volume and how academia could engage with issues of identity-based mass violence.

The Atrocity Prevention Lab at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative hosted its 2nd virtual conference, Spatial Strategies for Peace, on March 18 and 19, 2025.

This year’s conference explored the applications of maps, data, and spatial methods in supporting early warning and early action efforts aimed at preventing conflict and atrocity. This conference presented an exciting, free, and virtual opportunity for practitioners, policymakers, technologists, and academics in the fields of atrocity and conflict prevention to engage with one another, share insights, and explore how spatial methods can drive more effective atrocity prevention efforts.

Moderated by co-editor Jai-Ayla Sutherland with contributors ElsaMarie D’Silva, Michal Braier, Efrat Cohen Bar, and Natalia Garcia Cervantes.

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