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Who We Are 

The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution’s Peace Engineering Lab launched in Fall 2020 to contribute a peace studies perspective to the growing peace engineering movement. The Lab supports experimentation on issues of emerging peace technologies and innovative approaches to intervention that could help peace engineers navigate the complexities of social conflict in their work. 

The Carter School Peace Engineering Lab is partnered with members of the Peace Engineering Consortium- Drexel University, the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford University, the University of New Mexico (UNM)- which has defined peace engineering as “The application of science and engineering principles for transdisciplinary systemic-level thinking to directly promote and support conditions for peace, and the safe and ethical deployment of emerging technologies.” 

Mission 

Develop a Carter School approach to Peace Engineering through experimental research on tools, spaces, and processes that focus on transformation, power dynamics, complexity, accountability, governance, and narrative.  

Approach  

1. Fast iteration 

2. Public Engagement 

3. Complexity-informed measures for complex times 

4. Practice-informed theory 

Project Streams:  

The Carter School Peace Engineering Lab is a student-led initiative supported by Dean Alpaslan Ozerdem, the Faculty Lead. Students are currently investigating the following project streams:  

Distributed Ethnography and Complexity-Informed Conflict Resolution: Focuses on using SenseMaker, a complexity-informed approach to narrative research to harness the power of local story collection networks, develop weak signal detection and early warning for violence prevention and conflict transformation, and anticipatory innovation governance.  This project stream is a collaboration with Visiting Researcher Dave Snowden. 

  • Point Person: Keil Eggers 
  • Funding:
    • University of Kansas Center for Public Partnerships and Research SenseMaker Graduate Research Assistants 
    • Carter School Peace Labs Seed Funding 

Streets as sites of urban conflict, violence, commons, social movement, and peacebuilding: Explores questions such as: how can we bridge the gap between broad, values-based principles and support of hyper-local mobility initiatives? What street conditions are most conducive to peaceful societies? When has grassroots activism contributed to systems-wide social change for people-centered streets? 

TechPlomacy: Focuses on private/public sector relationships with governments as well as data governance and collaboration. 

  • Point Person: Elana Sokol 

Contact:  

For more information about the Carter School Peace Engineering Lab or to learn about how to get involved with a project stream that interests you, please contact our coordinator Keil Eggers: keggers@gmu.edu. 

Current Members:  

Keil Eggers, Peace Engineering Fellow 

Ashton Rohmer, Peace Engineering Fellow 

Elana Sokol, Peace Engineering Fellow 

Kayla Koontz, Peace Engineering Fellow