Pol Bargués Pedreny

• Theory and Practice of Peacebuilding and State-building
• Culture: Constraint or Resource for Cooperation?
• Nationalism and Ethnic Reconciliation
• Balkans: Bosnia and Kosovo
• Politics of Catalonia
• Sources for Critique

Reinventing Culture as a Resource to Design Peace: Peacebuilding and Critique

While during the nineties, peace-building interventions had a top-down, Western-led and liberal approach; today, there is the tendency to include the locals' point of view in an increasingly hybrid and plural endeavour, as a way of rectifying previous failures. However, the tensions persist. For instance, how is it possible to accommodate different ways of social and economic order and, at the same time, strive for international peace or global cooperation? In other words, this research explores the dilemmas we face today when we seek to include culture and different forms of life in the processes of building peace. A potential risk, for example, is that by putting too much emphasis on difference and diversity, there is the possibility of entering an era of solipsism, in which cross-cultural judgements, truths or global projects are more and more difficult to pursue. There is, thus, an important need to explore peacebuilding theory and practices in order to save both cultures and global peace. This research aims to humbly contribute to this contemporary demand.

Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster, London, January 2011-April 2013, Modules Taught:

• Sovereignty and Intervention after the Cold War;
• International Security;
• Humanitarian Intervention;
• Global Political Economy; and
• Key Concepts in International Relations

• 'The Crisis of Peace: From Hybrid Approaches to Radical Spaces of Complexity', ISA Annual Convention, Toronto, 29 March 2014
• Co-Organisation of the Conference ‘Hybrid Peace and Order: Selfhood and Socio-Political order beyond Individualism and Collectivism’, Centre for Global Cooperation Research, Duisburg, 19 November 2013
• ‘Coming True of the Post-modern Dream? Agency, Identity and Resilience in Post-conflict Societies’, 8th Pan–European Conference on International Relations, 21 September 2013
• 'The New Institutionalism and the Diffusion of the Concept of Culture', ISA Annual Convention, San Francisco, 3 April 2013
• 'Decentralisation in Kosovo' (co-presented with Elisa Randazzo), Goldsmiths and LSE PhD Symposium, Goldsmiths University, London, 18 June 2012
• 'Closing Remarks: The Future of State-building?', The Social and the Political in Discourses of State-Building, University of Westminster, 27 April 2012
• Organisation of the post-graduate conference 'The Social and the Political in Discourses of State-Building', University of Westminster, 27 April 2012
• 'Multiculturalism and Ethnic Conflict Management in Kosovo: The Process of Decentralisation' (co-authored with Elisa Randazzo), Intellect base International Consortium Academic Conference, San Antonio, Texas, USA, 12-14 April 2012
• 'The Political in Ethnic Politics', University of Westminster, PhD Conference, London, 21 March 2012
• 'Peace-Building in Kosovo and the Narrow Narrative of Multiculturalism' (co-presented with Elisa Randazzo), Kosovo Public Policy Center, the American University in Kosovo Research Center, and the Victory University College, Managing Diversity in the conference Post-Conflict Western Balkans: Multiculturalism, Multi-ethnicity, and Europeanization, Pristina, Kosovo, 24-25 June 2011
• 'The failed loop of the narrative of Multiculturalism', University of Westminster, PhD Conference, London, 6 May 2011
• Organisation of the ‘First Congress iENTER’, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2008