Critical Peace Studies – Contemporary, Transnational Perspectives | bpb.de

Dr. Mahdis Azarmandi is a scholar of Peace and Conflict Studies whose work examines how war and peace are shaped within a global system structured by imperialism, capitalism, and colonialism. Her research interrogates how dominant frameworks of „peace” often obscure the uneven distribution of violence, and how global hierarchies determine which conflicts are recognised, legitimised, or ignored. Her work on „racial silence in peace studies” traces how race underpins these distinctions, challenging narratives that position the West as a site of peace while locating violence elsewhere.

Dr. Azarmandi currently works at the University of Canterbury, in the Faculty of Education, School of Social and Cultural Studies in Education. Her teaching and research connect peace studies with questions of justice, focusing on how systems of power shape knowledge, institutions, and everyday life. Her interdisciplinary work spans education, antiracism and memory work, examining how histories of violence and struggle are carried, contested, and reinterpreted across different contexts.

Dr. Mariam Salehi is a political scientist, working at the intersection of International Relations and Peace and Conflict Research. She leads the junior research group „Transnational Conflicts” at the INTERACT Center for Interdisciplinary Peace and Conflict Research at Freie Universität Berlin, which focuses on struggles for change and justice, as well as the knowledge politics of violence. Currently, she mainly works on reparations and the role of technical work in emancipatory struggles.

Veronika Zablotsky is a political theorist with an interest in global histories of migration and empire; transnational solidarity and social movements; as well as postsocialism, neoliberalism and diaspora in the SWANA region. She holds a PhD in Feminist Studies, Politics, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among her publications are the co-edited anthologies Beyond Sanctuary: The Humanism of a World in Motion (Duke University Press, 2025) and Solidaritäten transformieren. Infrastrukturen und Praktiken in der Migrationsgesellschaft (Adocs, 2025) as well as the handbook chapter „Affecting Appeals: Armenian Refugee Narratives in the Archives of Early Humanitarian Discourse“ in The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives (Routledge, 2023). She last taught in the Department of Philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin.