Peace Humanities: Peacebuilding Through Literature and the Arts

Event description

Academic events
Arts and entertainment
Free
Inclusion
Open to the public

Can stories, films, and works of art help us understand, and even build, peace? The emerging field of Peace Humanities suggests that they can. Bringing together insights from history, religion, philosophy, literature, sociology, psychology and anthropology, peace humanities places humanistic perspectives at the center of peace studies. Rather than defining peace simply as the absence of conflict, this approach asks how cultures and communities imagine, practice and sustain peace across time.

Join us as Jolyon Mitchell helps the center launch the Peace Humanities initiative by exploring how literature, film and the arts open imaginative spaces for thinking differently about violence, justice and reconciliation. Creative expression—from storytelling and theatre to cinema and visual media—shapes how societies interpret conflict and envision alternatives. By considering the arts and humanities, this lecture highlights how peacebuilding happens not only through diplomacy and policy, but also through the stories we tell, the images we create and the cultural imagination that helps make more peaceful futures possible.

The Hardt-Nickachos Lectures in Peace Studies feature leading scholars and practitioners whose work highlights humanity’s imagination of peace and efforts to construct peace in diverse locations, historical periods and in the contemporary moment. This year’s lecture launches a new research initiative in Peace Humanities.

About the speaker

Jolyon Mitchell is principal of St John’s College, Durham, and a professor at Durham University who specializes in religion, violence and peacebuilding, with reference to the arts and media. Educated at the universities of Cambridge, Durham and Edinburgh, he worked as a producer and journalist with BBC World Service and Radio 4 before moving to the University of Edinburgh, where he served as director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues and academic director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. He is a former president of Theology and Religious Studies UK (TRS-UK), the national association for theology and religious studies in the U.K.

He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, as well as many chapters and articles, including “Promoting Peace and Inciting Violence: The Role of Religion and Media” (Routledge, 2012); Religion and Peace” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022); “Picturing Peace: Photography, Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding” (Bloomsbury, 2025); and “Media Violence and Christian Ethics” (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He is completing a book, “A Passion for Performance: The Mysterious Resurgence of Religious Drama” (Oxford University Press, 2027).

He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and a life member of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge. He has served on international film juries at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals and directs several peacebuilding projects, including one that led to a widely used co-edited volume, “Peacebuilding and the Arts.” He has also worked with Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders, as well as Palestinian and Israeli journalists, on a peacebuilding project in Jerusalem and beyond. A keen swimmer, cricketer and former marathon runner, he has lectured worldwide. One of his daughters, Jasmine, is the most recent winner of The Great British Bake Off.

Logistics

This event is hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and will take place on the ASU Tempe campus in the Biodesign Institute Auditorium (BDB-B105), and will be live streamed through the Center's YouTube channel and on ASU Live. Whether you plan to participate via livestream or in-person, we appreciate you taking a moment to register, which is required for this event. Your confirmation and reminder email will provide detailed directions to the venue, including parking information and key livestream details.

The lecture will consist of a special lecture by Jolyon Mitchell and short moderated discussion with Yasmin Saikia, followed by audience Q&A and a reception offering light refreshments.