INTERNATIONAL PEACE CONFERENCE AURORA
On February 17-21, 2025, the University of Innsbruck, Austria, hosted the Aurora International Peace Conference on the theme “The Role of Higher Education in Peacebuilding”. The conference aimed to provide a platform for discussing critical questions about how higher education institutions can respond to complex global circumstances by promoting cultures of peace through educational initiatives, activities and policies. The conference engages with the following key questions:
- How can the universities and institutes utilize their mission (teaching, research, third role) in the best way to support conflict prevention, transformation, and peacebuilding?
- Which capacity-building programs (teacher training and professional development) for the staff and students could and should be introduced to respond to different stages of the peacebuilding process?
- What can we learn from practitioners in the peace-building sector to enhance the role of universities in becoming agents of peace in conflict-affected societies?
The conference welcomed over 170 international experts—both scholars and practitioners in the peacebuilding sector and related fields—higher education policymakers, academics, and students from Aurora universities, their partners, and beyond to discuss the challenges and opportunities of universities in promoting peace.
Leading Research Scientist of the Ethnopolitics Department of Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ph.D. (Political Science), Associate Professor Anastasiia Dehterenko presented a research study Impact of the Ethnopolitical Management on Peacebuilding: The Case of the System of Educational Resilience in Panel 14: Experiences of HEI from War Zones and with Post-War Reconstruction, Recovery, and Reconciliation II. Anastasiia Dehterenko presented the results of the research project, which was supported by the German scientific foundation Gerda Henkel Stiftung in 2023, and the second round of research has already begun on January 1, 2025. The researcher emphasized that the Ukrainian Northern Pryazov’ye is a unique region of Ukraine, which has been partially a war arena since 2014. Since 2022, residents of the area have been forced to leave their homes and become refugees from the war. Given that the territory of the Ukrainian Northern Pryazov’ye is home to 85% of the Greeks in Ukraine, it is appropriate to talk about the resilience of the Greeks of the Ukrainian Northern Pryazov’ye.
Anastasiia Dehterenko
In the Paper at the Peace Conference, ethnopolitical management, which has a global impact on peacekeeping, was considered as the example of the system of ensuring the educational resilience of territorial communities in this region, with an emphasis on the work of Mariupol State University. The researcher presented the methodology for measuring ethnopolitical resilience and offered recommendations for the Venice Commission. The issue of ethnopolitical management must gain new relevance, in particular in connection with the displacement of the population and the integration of war refugees, as well as Ukraine’s preparation for EU accession, when one of the conditions was to improve the situation of Ukraine’s national minorities. The system of ethnopolitical management in Ukraine is an important resource component of the country’s post-war reconstruction. Improvement of the political and legal framework for the protection of the rights of national minorities in Ukraine, as one of the important requirements for Ukraine’s accession to the EU, is inextricably linked to the reform of the entire system of state ethnopolitical management.