A Call to Action
On February 24th, Russian troops entered Ukraine. The Carter School Peace Engineering Lab and students of the “CONF 695- Peace Engineering and Participatory Approaches to Narrative” course have launched Sensemaking in Ukraine to bring to light the experiences of everyone who has been affected and better understand what can be done to improve the situation in the short term and prepare for peace.
We invite you to participate in a peace-building process that begins with sharing your interpretation of the events in Ukraine with an innovative peace technology called SenseMaker. Each interpretation becomes part of a pattern that you will be able to explore on a public data dashboard once you finish. By gathering hundreds of interpretations, we will be able to create a map of how the Ukraine conflict affects people worldwide and their perception about what needs to be done to reach a ceasefire in the short term and build peace over the long term.
As a follow-up to gathering the stories, we are planning ways to strengthen connections between people and build shared understanding to take action for peace. Future activities will include:
- Public Story Sharing Circles: We will host virtual events where people share their story with the SenseMaker tool and then make sense of the patterns formed by the people in the room.
- Emergent Patterns: We will publish trends that we spot in the data and why they are important for building peace and share them with participants and potentially news outlets and policymakers.
- Citizen-to-Citizen Sensemaking Workshops: We will host virtual workshops to read and interpret what people share and ask ourselves: What can we do starting tomorrow to make peace?
- Scholarly Activities: We will develop theory and practical guidelines for how a peacemaking practice could be developed with SenseMaker technology in times of conflict and crisis.
Share Your Experience: http://peaceengineeringlab.com/ukraine
Your experience and perspective matters and we want to hear from you. Share your experience by clicking the link above. Additional details are provided on the research process, confidentiality, and how the data will be used to support peace on the survey itself.
You may answer questions in English, Ukrainian, or Russian by clicking on the box on the upper right hand side of the survey.
Explore the Data
A public data dashboard will be published when 100 experiences have been shared with Sensemaker. The link to access the data will be available here
Get Involved
If you are interested in learning more about the project, becoming a story collection partner, attending events, or receiving project updates, sign up here: https://peaceengineeringlab.com/getinvolved
Any information that you share on the sign-up form will not be associated with the experience that you share. If you have any questions, contact lead researcher Keil Eggers (pel@gmu.edu, IRB #1885503-1).
Join us for the Carter School’s Spring Peace Week on April 6th from 6:00PM-7:00PM EST for our event- Sensemaking in Ukraine: A Peace Engineering and Participatory Methods Showcase. Get tickets on Eventbrite.
Meet the Team
Sensemaking in Ukraine is hosted by the Peace Engineering Lab and supported by the students of CONF 695- Peace Engineering and Participatory Approaches to Narrative course, the first course dedicated to teaching the SenseMaker approach as a peace research methodology. Students have been integral in creating the SenseMaker design, collecting experiences from diverse audiences, and developing approaches for sensemaking and conflict resolution.
Project Team CONF 695 Peace Engineering and Participatory Methods :
Solon Simmons, Associate Professor
Keil Eggers, Teaching Assistant
Kaylyn Matis
Haley Nelson
Sam Hediger
Oakley Hill
Padideh Jalali-shirazi
Ashton Rohmer