Peace and Conflict Studies and the Mark News
This year i have the absolute pleasure of teaching Intro to Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto.
While I am keenly aware of the history this course, and didn’t want to radically change the syllabus, developed by some great canadian academics over the past 15 years, I did want to add a bit of my influence. So, one of the things we have done this year is entered into a partnership with The Mark News.
Student were divided into three groups (Afghanistan, DRC and Iran) and have together build a truly remarkable resource page for each of the three conflicts. The intro text and video of the site are below, but I really encourage anyone interested in or working on any of these countries to take a look.
Many have argued that the future of news is curatorial - that online media allows for new forms of collaboration with new levels of added value. We hope that our site provides precisely this.
Trudeau Center: Canada and Three Contemporary Conflicts
Welcome to a pilot project between the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and The Mark News website. In September, students in Taylor Owen’s class embarked on a year-long trial in student research and online outreach. The goal was to dive deep into three contemporary conflicts partnering the students’ research skills with The Mark’s national reach. The project seeks to break down the silos between both research and policy and academics and journalism. For each conflict, we have provided summaries of the canonical works, leading analysis, Canadian history, and Canadian policy choices, as well as a regularly updated breaking news feed - all written by the students. Explore, learn, and enjoy!
The Mark Intro Video from The Mark News on Vimeo.