From Post-Conflict to Proxi-Temporal Peacebuilding: Rethinking Universities and Ways of Knowing Peace During Active War

Over the last three decades, peace scholarship has produced a wealth of literature about conflict prevention, conflict transformation, and post-conflict reconstruction. Methodologically, participatory, transdisciplinary and collaborative approaches have also challenged the way that research has treated conflict-affected societies, including them as partners in inquiry rather than simply using them as source of data. United Nations Sustaining Peace agenda in 2016, at a policy level has defined peacebuilding as a process that extends “before, during, and after” conflict. Although it widened its temporal horizon, the middle term of “during” remains much less theorised compared to prevention and recovery. In this paper, I illustrate the need for a new methodological approach and present the Proxi-Temporal Peacebuilding Framework as an ontological, epistemological, and methodological response to this problem. I argue that active conflict is not merely the background behind the work of a researcher. Proximity to conflict, and the temporality of living through it, shape both what peace can be and how it can be known. Building on participatory peace research, critical pedagogy, feminist relational methodologies, and the United Nations Sustaining Peace agenda, I argue that, where war continues, universities can become conflict-embedded communities as they continue to teach, research, collaborate, and maintain different forms of social continuity. I argue, operationalising the “during” dimension requires methods that combine participation with trauma-aware ethics. Equally, local co-production of peace knowing requires sustain attention to changing relationships and risk. Therefore, the framework is offered as a foundation for how we do research, teach, and peacebuilding in the midst of conflict, rather than in anticipation of, or retrospect upon, its end.