The Conflict Tipping Podcast

In this episode Laura interviews Laura Aumeer, Director of the Europe-Asia Department of Conciliation Resources, overseeing work in the South Caucasus and South Asia regions, as well as cross-regional peacebuilding work.

Laura brings expertise on adaptive peacebuilding management and led our work with the Smart Peace consortium, an innovative consortium integrating research and implementation to address complex conflict problems. She also worked closely with the Women Mediators across the Commonwealth Team, providing secretariat support to the network. 

Before Laura joined Conciliation Resources, she set up and managed violence reduction programmes with a focus on learning and innovation, for an international development consultancy, where she managed teams in Nigeria, South Sudan and Malawi. She previously worked in DFID, to support adaptive programming and learning.

Before this, she worked in and with grassroots UK-based charities to advocate for an inclusive approach to tackling gender-based violence, and to increase support for women's organisations. She holds an MSc from LSE in politics and democracy, for which she conducted research with women's organisations and wider civil society organisations in Thailand and Egypt on the changing nature of civil society-state relations.

• Laura Aumeer | Conciliation Resources (c-r.org)

In this episode Laura interviews Sebastian F. Winter, a physician-scientist working at the intersection of public health policy, medicine, and academia with a vision to shape healthcare and inspire a lasting social impact. 

He is currently Head of Policy and Research at the International Bureau for Epilepsy (IBE), where he works with an interdisciplinary team committed to make epilepsy a global public health priority and improve the lives of over 50 million people living with epilepsy worldwide.

Beyond previous roles in clinical medicine and research, he co-founded and co-lead a social venture that promotes mental health and peace-building among refugee communities. A globally trained MD-PhD with exposure to various healthcare systems across four continents, he is passionate about public health and education policy (past projects at WHO Europe and UNESCO), as well as academic research, including projects in neurotoxicity, oncology, refugee mental health, brain health, NCD prevention, and public health ethics.

His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Neuro-Oncology, Neurology, the European Journal of Cancer, The Brookings Institution Press, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, and the International Journal of Health Policy and Management, and he has gathered substantial experience as a public speaker at international conferences and platforms including TEDx.

An alumnus of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung) and affiliate researcher at the MGH Cancer Center at Harvard Medical School, he holds a Ph.D. (summa cum laude; '22) and M.D. (Distinction; '20) from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and a B.Sc. (1st Class Honours; '13) in Neuroscience from King’s College London, UK.

The brain health paper can be found here: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Brain-health-directed-policymaking_Final.pdf

• https://www.sfwinter.com/

In this episode Laura interviews Mediator and Facilitator Felicity Steadman. Felicity's career started out in the turbulent apartheid years in South Africa where she honed her dispute resolution skills and her capacity to work with diverse groups of people in the industrial relations field. She has mediated in 32 countries for more than thirty years, with more than 500 cases completed. After arriving in the UK in 2002 she quickly adapted to a new jurisdiction, qualified as a CEDR mediator and began mediating commercial disputes through CEDR. She was first accredited as a CEDR mediator in 2003, and in 2019 was appointed Head of Faculty at CEDR.  In 2021 she was ranked by Legal 500 amongst their top mediators in the UK. She is a founding member of Oxford Mediation.

• Felicity Steadman | Achieving Sustainable Outcomes

In this episode Laura interviews Tamsin Parnell, a linguistics researcher whose doctoral work focuses on identities, discourses, and division around Brexit. She is a research associate at the University of Warwick, visiting lecturer at Birmingham City University, and is interested in media and political discourses.  In this episode, Tamsin (and her cat Willow!) join Laura to talk about Brexit, covid-19, immigration, and how to reduce inflammatory speech and division.

In this episode Laura interviews Jan Gerrit Voelkel, who is a Ph.D. Student in Sociology at Stanford University. Jan's research studies intergroup and interpersonal relationships with two guiding research questions. First, what causes people's willingness to harm others and defend inequalities? And second, how can personal or societal change be achieved that increases equality and/or reduces harm? Jan has developed interventions that increase support for policies that aim to reduce economic inequality or increase opportunity for immigrants. Jan has also led the Strengthening Democracy Challenge, a megastudy that tested 25 crowdsourced interventions for reducing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity.

In this episode Laura interviews Professor Aleksandra Cichocka, Professor of Political Psychology at the University of Kent School of Psychology. Prof. Cichocka received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Warsaw in 2013. During her doctoral studies she was a Fulbright Fellow at New York University. After completing her PhD, she joined Kent, where she leads the Political Psychology Lab.

In this episode Laura interviews Oded Adomi Leshem, a Senior Research Associate at the PICR Lab and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, both housed in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. His research is located at the nexus of international relations, political science, and social psychology with a specialization in the beliefs and perceptions of people mired in protracted conflicts.

Oded studies the hopes and fears of people living in conflict zones and the impact of these future-oriented perceptions on political behavior. More broadly, he's interested in the formation and transformation of political attitudes and ideologies during violent conflicts. Apart from his focus on advancing theories in conflict resolution and political psychology, a key aspect of his research agenda is to design and test psychological interventions aimed at conflict transformation.

• More about Oded: https://www.eranhalperin.com/oded-adomi-leshem

In this episode Laura interviews Helen Winter, Co-Founder and CEO of R3SOLUTE.com, a program that strives to accelerate mutual integration of refugee and local communities and the rebuilding of refugee lives. R3SOLUTE aims to foster sustainable peace by reducing the social and economic costs of conflicts and maximizing the value of constructive debate for individuals, organizations, and communities.

Helen is an avid certified mediator and lawyer. She previously worked as a mediator with L. A. Superior Court and consultant with OnDeckMediation where her expertise included anti-discrimination law. In addition, her experience includes working with the United Nations Office of the Ombudsman and Mediation Services where she analyzed and addressed systemic issues within the organization. She is also an ambassador with International Justice Mission in Germany.

• https://r3solute.com/

In this episode Laura interviews Dr. Samantha Hardy Lawson, Principal at Conflict Coaching International and Adjunct Associate Professor at James Cook University.

Dr. Lawson is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the James Cook University (JCU), Conflict Management Resolution (CMR) Program. Sam is accredited under the National Mediator Accreditation System and certified as a transformative mediator by the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation in the United States. She is an experienced conflict coach and the founder of the REAL Conflict Coaching System.

A leader in the field of conflict management and resolution, Sam is a principal at Conflict Coaching International and runs a consultancy practice in creative conflict engagement and education. She has published widely in conflict resolution, including her books Dispute Resolution in Australia, 3rd ed. (2014), co-authored with David Spencer, and Mediation for Lawyers (2010), co-authored with Olivia Rundle.

In this episode Laura interviews Dr. Juan Diaz-Prinz, senior expert on mediation and dialogue at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Juan is a mediator, trainer, and facilitator who has dedicated his career to bridging the gap between theory and practice in mediation. He started his career in the Office of the International Mediator in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1998-2004) and then co-founded the CSSP: Berlin Center for Integrative Mediation. He served as its director and senior mediator between 2005 and 2013. He later supported the founding of the European Institute of Peace for mediatEUr: the European Forum for International Mediation and Dialogue. Before joining USIP, he was working on developing the Conflict Management Space as an online platform for developing simple innovative training material for practitioners working in the field.