Kent PhD student, Joana Amaral has been selected for the STIBET Programme for International Junior Scientists position and scholarship at the Philipps University Marburg in Germany, one of Kent’s international strategic partners.
Joana is supervised at Kent by Professor Feargal Cochrane, Director of Kent’s Conflict Analysis Research Centre (CARC), and Dr Neophytos Loizides, Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations and member of CARC. This award will give Joana the opportunity to work with leading academics in the field at Marburg’s Centre of Conflict Studies.
CARC and Marburg’s Centre for Conflict Studies have enjoyed a strong and fruitful relationship for a number of years and together offer the International Double Award, MA in Peace and Conflict Studies.
Professor Cochrane said, “CARC and the School (of Politics and International Relations) are developing links with Marburg and Joana will now be ideally placed to connect into CARC’s strengthening ties with our conflict colleagues there”.
Joana’s PhD research addresses a gap in conflict mediation literature on how mediation processes generate higher or lower levels of community support for peace agreements in referendums. Its empirical focus rests in wider Europe, in a comparative study of the mediation process conditions leading to the Good Friday Agreement and Annan Plan referendum results, in Northern Ireland and Cyprus respectively. It aims at a novel scientific understanding on how high-level mediation practises can generate widely supported peace processes and produce endurable peace agreements and, therefore, on its capacity to contribute to Conflict Resolution more holistic reconciliation outcomes.
Joana said, “I am extremely pleased to have been selected for this programme. As a School of Politics and International Relations PhD student and a member of the Conflict Analysis Research Centre, it is a privilege to have been awarded the opportunity to benefit from the University of Marburg’s academic expertise in Peace and Conflict Studies and to contribute to its Centre for Conflict Studies”.
For more information about Kent’s international strategic partners and our Internationalisation Strategy please contact International Development.