Issam M. Fares | Former Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon

Invitation to a lecture and open discussion with Nikolas Kosmatopoulos

02 May 2012

IFI’s UN in the Arab World Program and the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration, AUB cordially invite you to a lecture and open discussion with Nikolas Kosmatopoulos

“Pacifying Lebanon:
Towards a Research Agenda on Global Peace Governance”

Monday 7 May 2012 | 2:15 – 3:45 pm | Auditorium B1, College Hall, AUB

Nikolas Kosmatopoulos is visiting scholar at Columbia University (Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies/Department of Anthropology) and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He holds a PhD from the University of Zurich. He has been the initiator and coordinator of the research cooperation between the Jeunes Chercheurs Program of the Swiss Academy of Sciences and the Issam Fares Institute at AUB entitled, “Institutions of expert knowledge production: Challenges in the transformation in the peacemaking structures in Lebanon” (2008-2010). His latest publications include: “The Gaza Freedom Flotilla: Ethnographic Notes on Othering Violence” (Blackwell reader of Ethnographic Fieldwork) and “Towards an Anthropology of ‘State Failure’: Lebanon’s Leviathan and the Peace Expertise” (Social Analysis). Kosmatopoulos is also candidate for a position in the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration.

In 1992, the UN Secretary General announced the “Agenda for Peace”. Yet, peace has been elusive in most parts of today’s developing world. Nevertheless, a formidable field of multiple expert interventions towards peacemaking has boomed. This paradox invites scientific investigation and critical engagement. Kosmatopoulos’s paper makes the case for a systematic approach to contemporary forms of global peace governance. It does so in three steps: first, it suggests a set of questions around which a research agenda could be envisioned; second, it takes the May Events (2008) as a study case for the empirical analysis suggested; and, third, it discusses potential challenges and limits concerning research and policy making.