Past Speakers


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Unaccompanied and Unheard: The Sexual Exploitation of Boys in Refugee Camps & the Limitations of SGBV Conversations
Rasha Abousalem
Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Time: 5:00 pm CST
Venue: Switzler Hall 201 & Zoom

Venue: Tate 215 & Zoom

Synopsis: PEAFI was piloted last year, taking 120 youth aged 18-35 from 12 different countries through a fourteen-week online program. The program splits into three parts: head, heart, and hands. It results in the acquisition of skills and knowledge and the identification of an issue within the country of the team which requires them to research the cause, devises a possible solution or improvement, and plan (if possible) the implementation of the solution/improvement.
Bio: Alison joined Cardiff Bay Rotary some ten years ago and began working in the area of Peace. She has served on the Rotary Action Group for Peace for the past eight years. First as a Director, then as Chair of Education leading to Chair of the Board. She is one of a few global Cadre members of Rotary International for Peace and Conflict Prevention. She remains on the RAGFP Board as Technical Director. She is based in Cardiff, Wales, and works (on behalf of Rotary) with prisoners, refugees and asylum seekers, and youth. She is currently Peace Officer and District Governor for Southern Wales. In this role, she works with the Home Office, Cardiff Council, multiple universities, and other leading organizations.
Register for this event here.
The MU Peace Studies Speakers’ Series presents Mary Dickson-Amagada. This talk will be given via Zoom, as well as occur at the Leadership Auditorium.
Register here.

Oct 4
Samuel Bior Garang, PhD, 64 Voices, South Sudan
Lecture Title: Defrosting the Frozen Lives

Talk by Angela Zimmerman, author of Alabama in Africa and professor of German history at George Washington University.
Lecture focused on a conjuror, Guinea Sam Nightingale, said to have been shot by cannon directly from West Africa to Boonville, Missouri, sometime in the 1850s.
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/7hnDkmoblys

Talk by Abdusabur Abdusamadov “Ozod” - MU Ph.D. candidate in sociology.
Topic: Speakers' Series: Ukrainian Crisis and Post-Soviet Russia
Subtopic: Understanding the crisis in Ukraine, its origin. and what comes next.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3RtOX5gZlA

Wasuk Godwin Sule-Pearce, University of West London, “Black Pupils Matter”
Feb. 25, 2022, 10:00 AM CT
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaXmOvYKm5Q

“Wars Against Black Freedom After Slavery”
A Peace Studies Black History Month 2022 Discussion
Feb. 17, 2022, 4:30 PM CT
Maria Mercone, University of Coimbra
Theodore S. Francis II, Huston-Tillotson University
Caree Banton, University of Arkansas
D.A. Dunkley, University of Missouri
YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghYaT-IjnfQ

Title: “Caring for Patients, Self, and Community: Conversations with Black Healthcare Workers in Toronto.”
Date: Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022
Time: 6:30 pm Central Time (CT)
Speaker: Dr. Karen Flynn, associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and the Department of African-American Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogEAPxLf4vc

The MU Peace Studies Director, Daive Dunkley, to give Paper at a Plenary Session of the Conference on Religion in Latin America and the Caribbean: Past, Present and Possible Futures, organized by the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), University of London in collaboration with the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization (CRCG), University of Groningen. The event was held Jan. 13, 2022

(Right) Ricia Anne Chansky, professor of literature in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and (Left) Marci Denesiuk, Canadian writer who teaches in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez.
Hurricane María made landfall in the Puerto Rican archipelago in September 2017, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. The storm was only the beginning of the disaster, though, as the aftermath was defined by inadequate aid and failed governmental relief efforts.
This catastrophe in Puerto Rico is indicative of the multiple other marginalized communities on the frontlines of the climate emergency whose positionality as second-class citizens prevents them from receiving necessary support and participating in larger conversations about mitigating this global crisis. Ricia Anne Chansky and Marci Denesiuk, editors of Mi María:
Surviving the Storm, Voices from Puerto Rico (Haymarket Books, 2021) discuss oral histories that narrate surviving the hurricane and its long aftermath in Puerto Rico as a means of beginning to parse through issues of climate justice on a global level. Event held Nov 17, 2021.
YouTube Link:

While nobody today speaks of Bosnia or Cyprus as ongoing atrocities, both nations are, indeed, engulfed in genocides that persist. Based on over ten years of research in Cyprus and Bosnia,
Dr. J.D. Bowers will speak to the present-day manifestations of genocidal beliefs, behaviors, and goals that continue to shape the lives of both victims and perpetrators and which perpetuate violence without mass killings. Event held Nov. 10, 2021.
YouTube Link:

Peace Studies Director Daive Dunkley talked about his new LSU Press book, Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement, during a live virtual presentation and Q&A. Check the link below to see the video on Facebook. Event held Oct. 28, 2021.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=729323581358954