UNESCO Chair on Refugee Integration through Education, Language and Arts

Call for proposals out now!

May Peace Prevail

This year the Spring School will focus on peacebuilding, specifically using arts, languages and education. For 2025, we invite proposals which explore how to build peace in the minds of people, how to live together peacefully, restoratively and interculturally, how to respond to and counteract current events worldwide that seek to divide societies, and how to ensure that peace prevails, founded on justice.

In so doing we acknowledge that to even contemplate peace when colleagues and friends in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and especially in Gaza, Sudan, Tigray, Ukraine and Lebanon (full list of armed conflicts available here) are experiencing genocide and war crimes of the most horrifying nature is, in itself, a luxury. We are seeing many of the international agreements and conventions which bind our work in the UNESCO Chair, at the University of Glasgow, in shreds and our own critical discussions mean that we have lost much faith, even the little we may have had, in peace-building initiatives. We see our work at present as requiring a degree of resignation from the violent structures which have now comprehensively failed. To work alongside those who should have been offered international refugee protection such that their lives and the conditions for their dignity and life might have been restored is now very much our urgent task. But how to do this when we are grieving tangible and intangible losses on so many levels? What sustains the work of peacebuilding and conflict transformation when language fails, when art is mourning, when grief is raw and critical capacities struggle to make any sense of the world?

And yet – this is our task as people of intellect. And study. And Art. And education. So, what might we say when words fail, when resignation is a necessary task, when forms which held hope no longer exist or are themselves destituted of all power? 

Sub-topics

We invite proposals which touch on or address:

• Non-violent strategies to prevent hatred, wars, and violent conflicts, we are especially interested in strategies that include languages and/or arts. 
• Examples by community groups/organisations where peacebuilding is part of the integration methodology: what are the difficulties and best practices? 
• Researching “peacebuilding”, how to deal with research-related issues (access to conflict areas, cultural representation, story extraction etc.).
• Educating the next generation of peacebuilders: bearing witness and passing on knowledge, approaches to integrate peacebuilding and conflict resolution into school curricula. 
• When peace is not your daily reality, what can be done? Methods for using art to preserve the socio-cultural memory of people affected by conflict and to support mental health. 
• Strategies for creating spaces for reconciliation and dialogue, creative art approaches to facilitate healing in post-conflict societies. 
• Critical perspectives on liberal peacebuilding, on securitisation and theoretical models, routed in praxis, for enabling peace to prevail, perspectives from people with lived experience of conflict and persecution.

Structure of the Spring School

This is a 3-day in person event, taking place on 13-15 May 2025 in Glasgow. We will structure the contributions in set blocks of 5/30/45/90 minutes, and proposals should bear this in mind. Of course, this is just a guide and proposals of a longer/shorter duration will be considered. We are open to most types of interaction at the Spring School!

Examples of ways to contribute:

• Workshop.
• Presentation – If your proposal has a more academic slant, you will be allotted a maximum of 30 mins. We suggest 20/10 or 15/15 mins presentation and discussion. 
• Interview / panel discussion.
• Pecha Kucha style presentation – 5 minutes each, these will be grouped together into a pecha kucha block of presentations.
• Performance – Theatre, dance, song, music, poetry, spoken word, storytelling etc. 
• Physical exhibit – Poster or installation for the communal areas.
• Hackathon/problem solving session.
• Other. You can take people outside, you can organise a flash mob, be creative!

Submission Process

Please submit a short proposal describing your contribution to unesco-riela@glasgow.ac.uk. If you like forms, you can download the Spring School 2025 proposal form here. If you don’t like forms, feel free to send us your proposal in one of the following formats:

• Written description of maximum one side A4 (11pt Calibri).
• Link to an audio/video recording of maximum 2 minutes.

Please include: 

• Title of your contribution; 
• Which sub-topic(s) of the Spring School your contribution addresses, and how; 
• Format and duration of contribution; 
• A short description of the contribution and its aims; 
• Names and organisations of the people involved in your session; 
• Any audio-visual, IT, space, access, language or other requirements you might have.

If you would like to host an online session, we will hold this same event online in October. The call for contributions will go out in June, but you are also welcome to submit your proposal for the October session now. Please mark clearly on your proposal that you want to present ONLINE. 

For questions, comments or to discuss your ideas, please contact Bella Hoogeveen at unesco-riela@glasgow.ac.uk.

Deadline for submission is midnight on Tuesday 28 January 2025.

Next steps

Proposals will be reviewed by members of the RIELA team and you will be notified of the outcome by 21 February 2025. An abstract, biography, and images for the programme will be requested upon acceptance and we will request this is returned by Thursday 6 March 2025.

Fees & Expenses

The Spring School runs on a very tight budget – this is how we can ensure it remains FREE to all with no registration fees. We cannot pay presenter fees. 

Childcare

Due to the location of the event, it will not be possible to provide on-site childcare. If you will require childcare, please get in touch with us as soon as possible, to see if we can assist or partially subsidise childcare as required.

Download the Spring School 2025 call for contributions.

Room photos