Peace Education as a Form of Global Citizenship Education in Universities in Divided Settings: Challenges and Prospects

• In Event: Peace education and global citizenship education

Proposal

This study explores the growing yet under-researched field of higher education (HE) peacebuilding in conflict-affected societies, focusing on university educators who teach for peace and global citizenship amid deeply entrenched legacies of war, division, and colonialism. Responding to the “local turn” in critical international relations (IR) and peace studies—which shifts attention from states and elites toward everyday practices—this research investigates how peace and global citizenship education (GCED) unfold in four divided societies: China/Taiwan, Cyprus, Korea, and Somalia/Somaliland.

Each context remains marked by unresolved conflicts: the Chinese Civil War (1949) and cross-strait tensions; Korea’s enduring division since the 1950–1953 war; Cyprus’s partition following Turkey’s 1974 intervention; and Somalia’s fragmentation after the 1991 civil war leading to Somaliland’s self-declared independence. Despite distinct histories, all grapple with fragile political arrangements, contested sovereignties, and aspirations for peace and recognition.

The study asks: (1) Can peace as a form of global citizenship be taught in universities in settings where the legacies of war, division, and colonialism remain deeply rooted, and what does this look like? (2) How might discourses of peace and global citizenship in divided and conflict-affected contexts amplify or mitigate sentiments of disenfranchisement? (3) How might education for peace and global citizenship engage productively with local and global dimensions of conflict? (4) In what ways might peace and global citizenship education empower learners and communities?

To address these questions, a qualitative comparative case study was conducted across the four contexts, involving ethnographic fieldwork (July 2023–February 2024), document analysis, and interviews with 40 faculty members (20 men, 20 women) across disciplines including education, sociology, history, and international relations. Participants ranged from early-career to senior scholars (ages 30–88), with efforts made to include voices across political divides, though access to northern Cyprus and North Korea proved impossible. Data were analyzed inductively, then reinterpreted through postcritical theory emphasizing embodiment in learning, a hermeneutics of faith (trust and humility in knowledge-making), and the plurality of critical perspectives.

Moving beyond conventional critical pedagogy that often diagnoses ignorance or deviance as root causes of conflict, a postcritical lens foregrounds relationality, affect, and the co-construction of knowledge. First, it embraces the embodied and emotional dimensions of learning, recognizing how war and division shape educators’ experiences. Second, its hermeneutics of faith rejects top-down knowledge imposition, affirming learners’ and communities’ wisdom in addressing their own conflicts. Third, it embraces plural criticalities, insisting there is no single “correct” critical stance; instead, multiple ways of knowing and engaging peace are possible, including through love, humility, and reciprocity.

Three key themes emerged: aspirations for international recognition juxtaposed with dissatisfaction with the language of ‘peace’; ambivalence toward the current status quo; and tensions over teaching for difference or commonality. For the presentation only the first two themes will be presented.

1. Seeking recognition and freedom
Across the cases, “peace” carried divergent meanings shaped by geopolitics, sovereignty, and aspirations for global belonging. In Somaliland, educators linked peace to international recognition, seeing GCED as a pathway toward legitimacy and stability. As one Business professor from Erigavo noted, Somalilanders “have no global citizenship,” framing education as preparation for global participation. Chinese educators, too, emphasized peace as tied to China’s “peaceful rise,” contrasting Western portrayals of conflict with visions of equitable development and conflict resolution skills for students.

In contrast, Taiwanese educators expressed deep ambivalence toward “peace” rhetoric, viewing it as potentially masking domination. One Sociology professor from Taipei argued that calls for peace risk legitimizing China’s annexation ambitions, insisting instead on autonomy, justice, and “permanent revolution” where “contention and cooperation co-exist” (as expressed in his syllabi). Here, peace was not the absence of conflict but the pursuit of democratic transformation amid existential threat.

2. Ambivalence Toward the Status Quo
In Cyprus, educators wrestled with the tension between preserving relative calm since the 2003 opening of the “green line” and pursuing deeper reconciliation or reunification. An Education professor from Nicosia argued for “destabilizing the idea that this is how the situation will remain,” calling for dialogue and alternatives to partition. Others noted that fear and uncertainty often sustain the status quo, with potential solutions—from unification to two-state arrangements—provoking anxiety across communities.

Similarly, Taiwanese educators described students’ strategic ambiguity in identity, sidestepping polarizing national labels (“Chinese” vs. “Taiwanese”) in favor of local affiliations, such as identifying by one's city rather than country (e.g., "I'm from Kaohsiung"). This pragmatic ambivalence allowed youth to navigate contested sovereignties while building everyday solidarities beyond rigid nationalisms.

The findings thus reveal contrasting orientations toward peace and citizenship shaped by sovereignty, recognition, and affect. In unrecognized states (e.g., Somaliland, Taiwan), peace discourses foreground difference and autonomy, while in recognized settings (e.g., China, Greek Cyprus, Somalia), they stress commonality and unity. A postcritical analysis emphasizes three key insights:

(1) Embodied Peacebuilding: Educators’ emotions, identities, and vulnerabilities permeate their teaching, underscoring the affective labor of peace education in divided societies. Postcritical praxis invites educators to “lean into” discomfort and ambivalence rather than suppress them, seeing emotions as generative for dialogue and transformation.

(2) Hermeneutics of Faith: Rather than imposing external templates for peacebuilding, universities should trust communities’ capacity to address conflicts contextually while collaborating toward positive peace. This approach resists deficit framings of local actors as ignorant or passive, emphasizing humility and solidarity in GCED.

(3) Plural Criticalities: Beyond singular critical theory paradigms, postcritical pedagogy embraces multiple ways of knowing and teaching peace—analytical and affective, rational and relational, critical and hopeful. This plurality enables peace education to move past rigid ideological binaries toward more open, dialogic, and justice-oriented practices.

In conclusion, across China/Taiwan, Cyprus, Korea, and Somalia/Somaliland, university educators teaching peace and global citizenship navigate tensions between recognition and unity, autonomy and commonality, critique and hope. Their pedagogies—shaped by war legacies, contested sovereignties, and affective attachments—reveal peace not as a fixed endpoint but as a relational, embodied, and plural process. A postcritical perspective highlights the importance of emotion, humility, and multiplicity in this work, challenging approaches that seek predetermined outcomes or universalist models of peace.

Author

• Kevin Kester, Seoul National University