Latest News Events
New trailer for MSc in Conflict Resolution
The Department of Government offers an exciting MSc in Conflict Resolution that includes the opportunity to have an internship with the IDCR. The Department has a new trailer for the MSc that features staff and students on the programme. To see the trailer and find out more about the degree click HERE.
IDCR and IDEA
IDCR Director Professor Todd Landman and Dr Dorothea Farquhar provided training yesterday for over 130 staff members of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), a 27-member state inter-governmental organisation that works to support democracy building worldwide.
The training included sessions on stylised facts about democracy, development, and human rights in the world; definitions and models of democracy; measuring democracy; institutional design and democratic performance; and assessing the quality of democracy. The assessment framework was published in 2008 and was co-authored by David Beetham, Stuart Weir, Todd Landman, and Edzia Carvalho.
IDEA staff have come from all over the world for 5 days of activities in Stockholm. In particular, the IDCR team was keen to meet with the IDEA Nepal office, which has been working on the new constitution for post-conflict Nepal. The IDCR and The Mountain Trust, a Cambridge-based NGO working on projects in Nepal will send an intern from the Department of Government at the University of Essex this summer to work in the IDEA office.
Other staff have come from South Africa, South Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Australia, and Kenya.
Ecocide Press Release
On Saturday 31 March, the IDCR and the Hamilton Group hosted The Ecocide: The Sentenceevent at the University of Essex. In addition to the restorative justice process that took place during the day, the event also featured and academic panel and a roundtable discussion.
The academic panel comprised presentations from Professor Steffen Boehm from the Essex Business School, Professor Sheldon Leader from the School of Law, Professor Hugh Ward from the Department of Government, and Dr Netta Weinstein from the Department of Psychology. Professor Boehm examined the comparative trends in carbon emissions data by region and country. Professor Leader argued that the structure of large multinational corporations allows for limited liability for environmental damage, but that new initiatives in project finance are beginning to look at ways of building in protections for the environment for some large scale extractive projects. Professor Ward presented a comparative analysis of political regimes and emissions data to show that liberal democracies may not be the best political system for the protection of the environment. Finally, Netta Weinstein shared a range of survey and experimental data on the individual benefits that can be derived through inceased interaction with nature.
The second session featured internationally renowned photographer Garth Lenz, who presented an extended version of his TED talk on the Tar Sands development in Canada. The audience was show remarkable photos of the arboreal forests in Canada and the scale of the current destruction of the area owing to the extraction of ‘dirty oil’ from the Tar Sands. The ensuing roundtable discussion included Dr Damien Short from the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, Michael Mansfield QC, and Dr Karen Hulme from the School of Law at the University of Essex.
The full press release can be found here:
Ecocide a success, Ecocultures on the way…
The Ecocide eventat the IDCR was a great success. Over 100 participants attended the one day event, which featured mock legal proceedings, a restorative justice circle, a sentencing, an academic panel and a roundtable discussion of the amazing work of photo journalist Garth Lenz. A full press release is forthcoming!
In a complementary event, the newly founded Essex Sustainability Institute will be hosting an Ecocultures event on 17-18 April 2012, which examines a variety of different ways in which groups and communities at the local level respond to and work within the new confines of environmental change.
The aim of the Ecocultures programme is to synthesise the best current understanding of what it means to be a ‘sustainable community’, how sustainable communities maintain social-ecological resilience, and how we can transfer lessons from these communities to improve ‘mainstream’ policy and practice.
More details can be found here:
