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ppplogoThe Peace Academy is happy to announce our partnership as part of a three-year project (2023-2026) entitled “Developing and Testing New Approaches to Peace Professionalism”. The project will

  1. Establish a network or a community of practice to improve our understanding of peace work and related skills, competencies, and values;
  2. Develop and test a system of assessment that can be scaled at the local, national, and international levels to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of peace professionals; and
  3. Create a platform to increase knowledge co-production, translation, and sharing about peace professionalism.

Overall, the project seeks to improve the planning, implementation, and evaluation of peace programs, and to complement curricula in peace and conflict studies.

The project is led by primary investigator Professor Philip Oburu Onguny (the School of Conflict Studies, St. Paul University, Ottawa) and a team of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. It is funded by a Partnership Development Grant by the Canadian government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The cross-sector and interdisciplinary team brings together partners and collaborators from Canada, USA, Kenya, Colombia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition to the Peace Academy, the research partners include the Civilian Peace Service Canada, Conrad Grebel University College, PEGASUS Institute, and the Alliance for Peacebuilding. Collaborators in the project are Lauren Michelle Levesque (Saint Paul University), Jacinta Mwende Maweu (University of Nairobi), Louis Monroy Santander (BSOCIAL Colombia), Jobb Dixon Arnold (Menno Simons College), Richard Moore (MDR Associates Conflict Resolution Inc.), and Anna Snyder (Menno Simons College).

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Ubleha for idiots

  • Poselami amidžu

    Give my regards to your uncle. Originally: Poselami amidžu. Very colloquial greeting, intentionally formulated from two Turkish words, to emphasize the familiarity of the speakers and their strong connection notwithstanding their jobs and the public. In purely semantical terms, a phrase Pozdravi strica (which would translate the same into English) might be used, but it would not have the same conspiratorial weight. By using colloquial discourse, the speakers distance themselves pointedly from the language of ubleha and thereby quite conciously confirm the essence of ubleha as an autoreferential non-identity. It is also worth mentioning whether an „amidža“ exists in the family in a sense of one's father's brother is irrelevant and that actually, in most cases, he does not exist at all; however, the greeting performs its function which a greeting Pozdravi strica could not perform at all and would perplex the speaker.

from Ubleha for Idiots – An Absolutely non useful Guide for Civil Society Building and Project management for Locals and Internationals in BiH and Beyond by Nebojša Šavija-Valha and Ranko Milanovic-Blank, ALBUM No. 20, 2004, Sarajevo, translated by Marina Vasilj.