The Applied Conflict Transformation Studies (ACTS) PhD Programme is an academically rigorous course of studies designed specifically for Asian peace practitioners and scholars to build upon their pre-existing knowledge and skills and to enhance their capabilities through intensive and reflective study. More specifically, this programme has been created to assist Asian peace practitioners to effectively contribute to the development, description, dissemination and implementation of Asian peace perspectives and practices. It will accomplish this aim through expanding students’ exposure to international and regional approaches to understanding and achieving effective conflict transformation, by enhancing their ability to question existing knowledge and practice in the field, and by strengthening their capacity to identify, develop and strengthen this region’s unique response to the need for conflict transformation work.

The ACTS PhD Programme utilises a curriculum and pedagogy specifically designed to bring together theory and practice. Upon completion of the programme, students will have developed a deep and comprehensive understanding of the field of Conflict Transformation and its practices, and be able to conduct research contributing both to practice and theory. The programme will therefore contribute to the total number of expert conflict transformation practitioner-scholars in the Asia region, and produce a more nuanced understanding of Asian conflict contexts, as well as of effective approaches to conflict transformation.

Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Conflict Transformation Studies (PhD)

Course Description

CPCS 701        Conflict Transformation: Assessing the State of the Art

In this foundational course, leading Asian peace scholars and practitioners will provide students with broad exposure to latest developments and innovations in Conflict Transformation theory and practice, as well as to how the field shapes the approach of strategic peace building. This course is also intended to highlight the importance of critical evaluation of the current state of the field of Conflict Transformation and the value in finding ways to contribute productively to it. Specifically, a focus on promoting reflection on the connections and disjunctions between the students’ practical experience in peace work and existing theory and research is intended to both improve the effectiveness of their practice and to draw out insights that can contribute to the field.

More specifically, this course will expose students to current trends and controversies in Conflict Transformation by focusing on three fundamental points of contradiction in the field:

• The role and function of justice in conflict transformation;
• The role of time in peace work; and
• The applicability of evolutionary perspectives to this field.

These three points of contention at the theoretical level represent the history and development of challenges facing peace builders in the day-to-day realities of conflict.

In order to capture the changing nature of peace work, this course addresses the transrational shift in peace politics and practice through an in-depth analysis of the “Many Peaces” framework and its application to diplomacy, military peace operations, development politics, political economy and peace research.

CPCS 702        Developing a Research Problem: Sources & Skills

This course is intended to build a number of fundamental skills needed to produce a dissertation and other scholarly work. These skills include:

• locating pertinent information for a literature review;
• reading literature critically, including assessing whether claims are well-supported by the data;
• comparing and contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of different theoretical and empirical approaches for understanding a specific problem;
• developing concepts and theory from data and/or practice;
• Deriving practice from theory, concepts and data; and
• developing citation skills.

CPCS 703        Culture of Peace

This course examines the concept of “Culture of Peace”. In the process of this examination, the development of such a culture will be examined including an investigation of the various forms of conflict and violence in the world today. (IR 750)

CPCS 704        Elicitive Conflict Transformation

This class focuses on the elicitive perspective of conflict transformation thinking and practice. It builds upon the work of John Paul Lederach and Wolfgang Dietrich and adds to these foundations additional perspectives of how conflict transformation can be understood and practiced from a systems point-of-view, where the peace practitioner is inherently part of the system in which they are working.

The ACTS PhD Programme approaches Elicitive Conflict Transformation through an integrative model entitled the Compass of the Peaceful Warrior. This model is a framework for navigating the complexities between Transrational Peace Philosophy and Elicitive Conflict Transformation. The model is a framework, which identifies levels of connections between inter- and intra-personal layers of identity and their corresponding practices of Elicitive Conflict Transformation, and corresponds to different concerns of the field of Applied Conflict Transformation. While the compass model can be used as a tool for analysis, it is primarily a guide for the self-training of the peace worker. Recognizing that the quality of presences is the primary tool any individual peace worker brings into a conflict, the compass model provides a general orientation for engaging with this quality of presence.

CPCS 705        Research Methodology: Qualitative, Quantitative & Mixed Methods

The field of Conflict Transformation is extremely broad and students are likely to be conducting their peace work in a wide variety of settings. Thus, this course builds on their existing knowledge and skills to further develop their ability to assess, design and conduct qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods research. Students will learn about topics including participant observation, field note construction and analysis, questionnaire development, quasi-experimental design, case study techniques and focus groups. Attention will also be given to both formative and summative evaluation research, both of which are likely to be of particular utility to practitioner-scholars. This extended course on Research Methodology will also include faculty from PUC. This course is intended to enable students to suit the research approaches they use to the nature of the issues they study, rather than being limited to using one or two methodologies with which they happen to be familiar.

CPCS 706        Effective Conflict Transformation Practice

This course covers topics essential to effective practice and leadership in the field of Conflict Transformation, which commonly requires working in teams and bringing together people with diverse and conflicting views and interests. Specifically, it will enhance students’ knowledge base and skills crucial to negotiation and management, leadership, group dynamics, and intergroup relations, including theories and research relating to issues of identity and approaches to improving negative inter-group relations.

CPCS 708        Leadership Ethics

This course looks at leadership from the perspectives of the personal characteristics of a leader that promotes decisions that reflect right intentions and right action. It uses critical analysis and the application of ethnical principles to examine contemporary social and workplace-based cases. (LEAD 810)

CPCS 709        Action Research & Other Practice-based Methods

The ACTS PhD Programme places strong emphasis on Action Research because this approach effectively harnesses students’ experiences as peace practitioners and simultaneously fosters a broadly informed and reflective approach to practice. Thus, this course is devoted to developing students’ expertise in Action Research, as well as other research tools currently emerging from peace practice such as Listening Methodology, Peace History, and dialogue-based research methods. Because Action Research utilises many of the specific techniques discussed in the broader research methods students will have studied in their first year, this class enables them to apply the conceptual and methodological skills learned in previous courses in the initial work relating to their individual doctoral research proposals. Students will supplement the instructor’s feedback to their peers by reviewing and providing input on their peers’ initial dissertation ideas and proposals. This course will thereby serve as a mechanism to broaden students’ knowledge base, develop their ability to critically assess scholarly material, deepen their exposure to a variety of research methods and develop a strong dissertation proposal by the end of their second year.

CPCS 710        Research Report related to student’s experience

                        (Underdevelopment)

CPCS 711        Pedagogical Development: Teaching, Design & Implementation

PhD-level scholars are often called upon to share their knowledge and help others learn and develop their own capacities. Thus, this class is intended to help students develop the skills necessary to present their knowledge to others effectively and help them learn how to stimulate learning in conference, teaching and/or workshop situations. It will cover basic material related to teaching (knowing and engaging your audience, effective communication, using Power Point effectively, how to facilitate discussions, planning group work, etc.). Students will use course material in planning and implementing the required teaching activity briefly described above in the Programme Structure section of this document.

CPCS 713        Dissertation Proposal, Preparation Defence & Revision

                        (Underdevelopment)

CPCS 714        Paper Presentation at Conference

CPCS 715        Preparation & Submission of Articles for Publication

CPCS 718        Dissertation