Karina V. Korostelina

Speaker Bio

Karina V. Korostelina is a Professor and a Director of the Sustainable Peace Lab at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, GMU. She is an establishing member and a President of the International Association for Reconciliation Studies. Her scholarship and practice are supported by 53 grants and presented in 18 books and over hundred articles and chapters. Dr. Korostelina has been a Fulbright New Century Scholar, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Writing Fellow, and a fellow at the Wilson Center for International Scholars. She also has been awarded 12 residential fellowships in leading universities worldwide. Dr. Korostelina is deeply involved in the practice of conflict resolution and peacebuilding, working with Governments and local organizations in over 20 countries. She has a long record of establishing collaborations with international institutions and has helped establish new programs in Conflict Analysis and Resolution in eight countries.

Keynote: Strengthening global and local communities to foster human security and sustainable peace

This keynote explores the limitations of current peacebuilding paradigms and introduces a sustainable peace approach that reimagines peacebuilding as a transformative process of mutual recognition of the complexities of intergroup dynamics and their functions in achieving peace and justice in post-conflict societies. Grounded in the BRIDGE framework of five core strategies —bonding, reassuring, involving, determining, and equalizing—it highlights how they can inform policymaking, institution building, and community practice. Emphasizing identity and power dynamics, agonism of perceptions, memories, and positions, and the empowerment of local agency, the talk outlines pathways for societal transformation in contexts of protracted and asymmetric conflict.