Today, we bring you a conversation with Susan Sgorbati, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College. In conversation with Lida Winfield, the undergraduate pillar head of the CT Collaborative and dance professor, Susan shares insights from her journey as a dance artist and educator, and how the principles of dan…

What does peace look like for ordinary people, and how we can create metrics of peace that reflect those things that people value? In this conversation, we bring you audio from a May 2023 talk by Peter Dixon, a member of the CT Collaborative's External Advisory Board and a Middlebury alum. Peter Dixon is an Associate Professor of Practice in Negoti…

What is safety? What is comfort? How does learning happen in an immersive, international setting? How do we foster meaningful relationships with host communities? In this episode, we talk about those questions and more with Dr. David Wick. Wick is Associate Professor and Program Chair in International Education Management at the Middlebury Institut…

In this episode, Caroline Harding ’24 interviews Professor Jennifer Ortegren, associate professor of religion at Middlebury and a 2022 CT faculty grant recipient. Ortegren is author of Middle-Class Dharma: Women, Aspiration, and the Making of Contemporary Hinduism (2023, Oxford University Press), which examines the intersections of gender, religion…

At the beginning of the fall semester, we invite you to join a conversation about conflicts on college and university campuses. This episode was recorded late in Spring 2024 and features some of our Conflict Transformation (CT) interns - Mandy Berghela, Teyonce Allison, Agnes Roches, and Caroline Harding - and Sarah Stroup, the CT director and coll…

At a time when campus conflict and protest is in the national spotlight, we revisit an important moment for Middlebury College - the March 2017 visit of Charles Murray - through the voices of ten Middlebury students. This episode was created in 2019 and hosted by Sarah Stroup. She interviewed a group of students with different experiences and persp…

In this episode, we talk with longtime Middlebury partner, the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP). SHECP assistant director Jen Handy invited CT leaders Kailee Brickner-McDonald and Sarah Stroup to join the "SHECP Talks" podcast to discuss how the CT lens can enhance experiential learning opportunities for students concerned ab…

Democratic institutions can serve as a powerful mechanism for channeling constructive conflict, which makes a recent wave of democratic decline particularly concerning. In this episode, we hear from Sebnem Gumuscu, associate professor of political science and head of the undergraduate "pillar" of the CT Collaborative at Middlebury. Gumuscu is an ex…

On today’s episode, we are excited to share a story of an experiential learning opportunity for exploring peacebuilding and intercultural competence (ICC). The CT interns lead a conversation with professor Thor Sawin. At the time of recording, Sawin was associate professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and has si…

As we have started teaching "Conflict Transformation Skills" at Middlebury, we have been fortunate to have a leading global mediator as a guest speaker and teacher. Francisco Diez is senior mediation advisor at the United Nations (UN). He has contributed to the UN’s efforts to foster dialogue and reconciliation in Bolivia, and provided expert advic…

Restorative justice, transnational activism, and communication across cultures are all spaces in which conflict transformation can inform the long work of social change. In this episode, restorative justice leader sujatha baliga and civil society scholar Sarah Stroup discuss the foundations of their work and its connection to the CT Collaborative a…

This episode features selections from a September 2022 talk at Middlebury by John Paul Lederach, with an introduction from Middlebury president Laurie Patton. John Paul Lederach is globally recognized for his pioneering theory and practice in the field of conflict transformation (CT). Lederach is senior fellow at Humanity United and professor emeri…

In this episode, we speak with Elspeth Boynton, the founder and CEO of diiVe, a South Africa-based organization that offers high-impact internships to college students. The in-person and remote global internships integrate leadership development, purpose coaching, data science skills, and cultural immersions. diiVe has brought conflict transformati…

Addressing social and political conflicts seems particularly challenging in an era of high polarization. Yet under certain conditions, perspective taking and story telling may shift exclusionary attitudes and policy preferences. In this episode of our podcast, we are sharing audio from a campus talk in October 2023 on persuasion by Professor Joshua…

Water shortages in the USA and dozens of other countries have highlighted our tenuous relationship with the world’s most important resource. In this podcast episode, we share audio from a TED-style talk from MIIS Environmental Policy and Management Professor Dr. Jeff Langholz. Langholz shares a vision for the future of water that transforms the way…

In this episode, Joseph Kaifala recounts his experiences growing up in civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and lays out a vision for peacebuilding that requires first dealing with the legacies of mass atrocities. Kaifala is the inaugural recipient of the Projects for Peace Alumni Award. The newly created award, supported by the CT Collaborative…

In this episode, dance professor Lida Winfield is interviewed by Middlebury College senior and CT intern Joe Hanlon. They discuss the importance of transformation and growth and the role of the arts in facilitating communication, relationship-building, and social change. Lida Winfield plays several important roles in the CT Collaborative. She is a …

Strategic empathy is the sincere effort to identify and assess patterns of behavior and the underlying drivers and constraints that shape those patterns. In a CT Collaborative-funded research project, a team from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at MIIS explored the utility of this concept for understanding the acquisition, thre…

In this episode, we talk with Beyond the Page (BtP), a Middlebury program of professional teaching artists who use theater techniques in college classrooms to foster creativity and storytelling. Conflict Transformation Collaborative and BtP have been exploring ways to shift conflict dynamics through community building, playful exploration, and seei…

Dylan Moglen and Alex Christodolou are two recent MIIS graduates. In 2022, they participated in a research project that fundamentally reexamined the definition of conflict, resolution, and transformation, focusing on communities that occupy a unique yet powerful space in the global imaginary: Indigenous communities living in the Amazon basin. In to…

Welcome to the Opening Up podcast series, a new effort from the Conflict Transformation (CT) Collaborative at Middlebury! The Conflict Transformation (CT) Collaborative at Middlebury is a major new initiative that seeks to expand our work on critical self-awareness, conflict analysis, intercultural communication, dialogue, restorative justice, and …

Welcome to the Opening Up podcast series, a new effort from the Conflict Transformation (CT) Collaborative at Middlebury! Many people hear the word conflict and pull away, because they think of the harm that can come from destructive conflict. Yet conflict is part of the human experience, and constructive conflict can enrich our relationships and c…