Researching the end of the (peacebuilding) world as we know it with Dr Julia Palmiano Federer [Ep. 31]

Episode Transcript
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Laura May (00:10):
Hello and welcome to the Conflict Tipping podcast from
Mediate.com, the podcast explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May.
And today I have with me, Dr.
Julia Palmiano Federer.
Julia is a senior researcher at theCenter for Security Studies at ETH
Zurich and a senior fellow at theNegotiation and Conflict Resolution

(00:31):
Collaboratory at the Harvard KennedySchool Center for Public Leadership.
Her research interests include critical,feminist, and decolonial approaches to
inclusive peace processes, unofficialpeace dialogues, and the nexus
between climate change and conflict.
She's the author of NGOs MediatingPeace and co author of The Power to
Protect, which is going to be launchedtoday as we're recording, of numerous

(00:55):
journal articles and policy papersand laureate of the 2022 Women,
Peace and Security Research Awards.
She is also a parent to two childrenand a wonderful human being.
So welcome, Julia.

Julia PF (01:07):
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me here.

Laura May (01:11):
I am so happy to have you here, especially because as we're recording it's
International Women's Day and it's greatto have two women here talking about peace
building and talking about your new book.
So I'm very excited to hear about this.

Julia PF (01:23):
Me too.

Laura May (01:25):
First things first, what led you to this is the biggest question, but
what led you to this field of research?
What was your interest in peace building?

Julia PF (01:35):
Yeah, that's a great question.
And I think I'm going to tell my lifestory a little bit . I was born in
Manila in the Philippines and shortlyafter my family had immigrated to
Vancouver, so the city of Vancouverlocated on the unceded Musqueam,
Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh FirstNations, in what we call Turtle Island,

(01:56):
the Indigenous word for North America.
And I grew up there and I ended up moving,had a wonderful childhood really in
the Filipino diaspora community there.
And I grew up and ended up in Geneva,finding myself in Geneva, doing my
master's in international affairs.
Being first introduced and integratedinto research and the policy

(02:18):
world, which was really exciting.
I was just asking myself, whereare the women in all these rooms?
And so it really led me downthis amazing path of looking at
the role of women and gender inpeace negotiations and mediation.
And then soon after I ended up having theopportunity to be involved supporting

(02:39):
peace processes in different places andspecifically the one at the time that
was ongoing in the country of Myanmar,in some places known as Burma, which at
the time which was about 2011 2015, were
undergoing a really incredibletransition process to maybe signing a
peace agreement that would end almost60, 70 years of conflict between

(03:03):
the government and the army and morethan 20 different armed groups.
And so this was a very big deal.
And at the time you also had anincredible amount of women's civil society
organizations all wanting to get involvedin the negotiations, and so part of
our work was supporting them to do that.
Fast forward a few years while there werea lot of successes I was also a lot that

(03:27):
I felt like I saw, I experienced, I waspart of intentionally, unintentionally,
that I felt like I needed to critique insome way, which is ended up why I ended
up writing a PhD, doing research thatasks critical questions about the, the
sort of architecture of internationalpeace building and how actors such as non

(03:50):
governmental organizations, individuals,private actors, the UN, all these sorts
of actors enter into a country andsupport a process, but also promote a
certain idea of what a peace processshould be, what a society should look
like if, and when it becomes peaceful.
So that's kind of whatbrought me to this field.
And then I think, you know, on aroundabout way, going into a full circle,

(04:13):
which is why I talked about my life story.
Well, I, I also was really inspiredand kind of struck by this idea of
going over 'there' or to other places.
And not looking at conflicts ormy community or how I grew up.
And so I had the opportunity to startworking with some incredible colleagues.

(04:35):
One of them is my incredible co author,looking at this idea of, of conflict and
locating Canada as a site of conflict.
And how indigenous women, non indigenouswomen were working together to sort
of mitigate conflict and it's kindof a different way of how I was taught
conflict was and what it looked like.
And so that's been really inspiring inmy work so that's a bit of a roundabout

(04:58):
way of saying I came back home.
And then home, I'm trying to go a stepfurther in understanding, well, why
did I go into conflict resolution?
I think also to heal conflict withinmyself as a researcher, as a peace
building practitioner, as someone thatwas removed from her home because of

(05:20):
politics and conflicts that were happeningin a certain way and, and growing up in
diaspora and not having that maybe, youknow, ancestral knowledge or community
knowledge or community connection.
And I learned and maybe I'll endwith a story of working with some
colleagues and, you know, they askyou, why, why are you doing this?
Like, what's your purpose?
And why are you in this field?

(05:43):
And what came out was, Iwas trying to heal myself.
And she's like, you know, a lot ofpeople that go into conflict resolution
and mediation and negotiation.
Are doing it to heal themselves.
And I'm pretty convinced of that.
So I think it's all connected.
And I feel pretty strongly about that.
So I hope that answers yourquestion in a very circular way.

Laura May (06:05):
I mean, to be fair, I asked you the broadest question in the world.
whatever you gave me would havebeen an answer at this point.
But certainly what you've said just now interms of healing others to heal yourself.
Yeah.
This is something I've heardreally a lot with conflict
researchers and mediators as well.
Also therapists, I would saythis comes up quite a lot.
And they're like, I can'tfix what's happening in here.
Let me externalize this.

(06:26):
Let me fix the problems around me.
And that will fix whatever conflictI can't quite deal with internally.
Or I have no control todeal with internally.
So I, I really admire that this issomething you recognize about yourself.
Because I

Julia PF (06:38):
mean, it took, it took me like 15 years

Laura May (06:41):
Yeah.

Julia PF (06:42):
to, you know,

Laura May (06:43):
Yeah.
Yeah.
But no, that's incredible.
And I mean, it makes me wonder ifit's not, maybe it is too personal,
like what, how will you know that youhave resolved the conflicts in the
world that you need to, to help you?

Julia PF (07:02):
yeah, we're going there.
It's

Laura May (07:04):
straight in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Julia PF (07:05):
straight in.
Oh, I love it.
And I feel like that's where I wanted togo, because it was something that I've
learned as a woman of color researcherthat I self identify as, being in a
field of academic research and practicein international peace mediation, as
you might understand, is, is maybe thereare not a lot of people who identify

(07:26):
in this kind of way in leadershippositions, putting scholarship out there.
Etc.
And so how would I, know, Ithink it's, I think if it's
communities directly around me.
So I would be talking about, let'ssay if I'm have a community of other
peace building researchers academics,scholar activists that I would

(07:48):
also put myself into the communitywith and then also where I work.
So in Turtle Island, and in Canada, butalso in Southeast Asia, in Myanmar, in
the Philippines that I don't get that sortof there's two things getting that sort
of unsettled feeling of just like ethicalickiness of something is not right.

(08:10):
And something could be donebetter or in a better way.
But then also, which I've also learnedworking with indigenous colleagues that
I've I've had so many teachings from inthe last few years that the ick is also a
good sign that you are unsettling yourselfand unlearning and questioning things
that were meant to not be questioned.

(08:30):
And then I think finding peoplethat think the same way as me.
So I know it's not just melike shouting into the void and
finding community in that way.
I feel like that's when I'llknow stuff is happening.
And then also, yeah, how it showsup in my own personal life because
I feel like that's also connectedas a researcher, as an academic,
as a scholar, as a practitioner,as a parent, as a peace builder.

(08:53):
Yeah, yeah, we went there, huh?

Laura May (08:56):
We did.
We went straight there.
I should have warned you.
This is like, this is going tocome with vulnerability today.

Julia PF (09:02):
That was good, that's awesome.
Yeah,

Laura May (09:03):
No I find that really interesting.
And I want to dig in a little bit to theethical ickyness, because I guess this
relates to what you were saying beforein terms of when you're in the wider
world, you notice this difference betweenhow you were taught to look at conflict.
And then what you've learnedmore recently, or more latterly,
about what conflict reallyis or how it's constituted.

(09:24):
Yeah.
So, I mean, is, is that thesource of the ethical ickyness?
Can you explore that a bit for me?

Julia PF (09:31):
I like how this is the first time I've ever said
that, but it's the ethical ick.

Laura May (09:35):
Yeah, got the icks.
Yep.

Julia PF (09:38):
Yeah.
Hey, I think this is great thatwe use ethical ick we're going
to make it a thing like fetch

Laura May (09:43):
A hundred percent.
Oh my god.
Not like fetch.
Like we can't have anyMean Girls references

Julia PF (09:47):
All right, I realize it's around one.
Okay, so ethical ick.
Yeah, so I would say that developingthe ethical ick was not when I was
studying conflict resolution andinternational affairs in Geneva, per
se, it was an amazing program, but thenit was only being really lucky to be
in an institution at the time whereI was really spoiled for choice with

(10:10):
amazing critical peace researchers.
So it was at the University of Baseland at Swisspeace where you could
really explore questions of knowledgeproduction, like how the knowledge of
what mediation is and what it shouldbe or what peace is and what it should
be is mediated through, a very WesternEurocentric lens, and having all of this

(10:30):
incredible decolonial feminist criticalliterature that you just can, can, can
sort of swim in and, and be really formedby, but at the same time, that's not
going to be in your hundred level syllabiof your undergraduate courses or even
your graduate courses to some extent.
And then you end up being put inthese silos of critical theorists.

(10:51):
There's a you know, positivistswe work with numbers.
We work with data.
Ideas and stories andthings are not real data.
These sorts of debates, right?
That we see a lot and that areevergreen and academia and scholarship.
And so I think the ethical ick developedin and has been really confirmed by, being
able to ask questions of who is producingknowledge, what kind of knowledge is

(11:15):
being produced, what knowledge is valuedand what's not, and then learning in real
time by lived experience that often, andnow there's research to back this up, my
colleague just wrote an incredible articleon how mainstream and dominant peace
mediation research is produced by whitemale or people that identify as male

(11:36):
in Western institutions, and she bringsout the the data receipts to prove it.
And so I think having thatsort of knowledge production
piece helps me understand, okay,when is it not feeling right?
And it's almost an embodied feeling.
Like there were many instances, doingfield research as like a, I was under

(11:56):
35 at the time, working with peaceprocess actors, doing interviews,
and doing my best to have it donein an ethical way, but still really
asking hard questions of like, well,what am I, What am I doing here?
And why?
And what was it that made me workon Myanmar as a case study versus
other Burmese researchers thatyou know, what's their access to

(12:19):
knowledge, , to journals versus mine.
So a lot of these questions of, I'mgoing to use this word in quotes,
because it might be jarring me, butpositionality, like, where's my identity?
What is, what's my position to power?
And how does that affectwhat I'm writing about?
But even how I ask questions,and so I think being able to
develop that muscle and reflexwhich is still very contentious.

(12:42):
Like for some researchers and there'sbig hardcore Academic debates that
are, that are debating whether youshould bring in your own position
and your values, but into research.
But it's like, for me, it's anobvious, you cannot separate this.
This is an artificial separation.
So I feel like navigating thosereally difficult questions is
always really a part of, of that.

(13:03):
And then tapping into that ick.
If I feel an ick about something, then I channel it by writing
a critical piece about it.
And I think, yeah, that's,that's how I'm working.

Laura May (13:13):
Okay.
So I am just going to do some dejargoning for a moment for those who

Julia PF (13:18):
Sorry, that's a lot of jargony.

Laura May (13:19):
it.
No, no, no, that's fine.
And so if I can summarize, a coreconcern here is that when people do
learn about peace building or conflict,you know, they go to university and
it's all there in the numbers and it'slike, this is the process, this is what
you follow, putting A plus B at thestart, it ends up at peace at the end.
And that's sort of likemathematical in this way, right?
Okay.
But then as you go on through yourstudies, you start to have access to

(13:43):
other ideas and other processes and go,actually, there's these people over here
that have great ideas and great processes.
Like, why are we ignoring them?
Or why are they excluded in the process?
Or why aren't we talking about their work?
And then in your own professional career,you know, you went in and you started
with this, and you noticed that youwere there as a researcher who had the

(14:04):
privilege or the access to this kind ofeducation and to these kinds of journals.
And there were people from the samelocation who didn't have the same access
and maybe weren't able to shape theprocess or express, well, what they needed
or how they saw their future should be.
And that in some ways wasthe, was the source of ick.

Julia PF (14:25):
100%.
Yes, that's a very good dejargoning summary of it.
Yeah, I think it's a feeling of,it's a guiding feeling for me that
influences a lot of my writing and work.
So whether it's this idea ofwho's mediating and what is being
mediated in a certain peace process.
Yeah, asking just these questions runningin the back of my head of access to power.

(14:49):
So who am I as a researcher,what am I bringing with me?
What's my political baggage?
What's my lived experience?
What's my privilege?
And then how is thatinfluencing what I'm writing?
Who I'm speaking to?
And then, am I doing harm byby conducting this research?
Am I'm really making acontribution to that place?
And what is the point?
Like what is really is it for me?

(15:10):
Is it for the context?
Is it for 'Us' as like a communityof mediation researchers and
practitioners and so I don't thinkit should be paralyzing I think it's
just having more awareness about it.

Laura May (15:22):
Having those different lenses to look at things.
But what I really love as well is thatyou mentioned that the ick is embodied.
You feel it, right?
Because I mean, often we, Ilove that we're using the ick.
I love

Julia PF (15:33):
I know it's, this is

Laura May (15:34):
Yeah, it's so good.
Because the thing is, I mean, oftenpeople will say they'll get the
ick from going on a date, right?
And they're like, oh, Ijust had the ick, so there's
something not quite right there.
And it's that discomfort.
And then, I think part of, maybe it'semotional maturation in some way, right,
is starting to listen to that ick andto that feeling and go, Oh, my body's

(15:55):
telling me that there's somethinghere that is not quite right for me.
It doesn't sit well.
And then, in the academic context,we're able to use that and say, Oh, okay.
What is this conflictthat I have inside of me?
What can I do about it?
And what do I need to listen to here?
So I love that you've actuallymentioned it's embodied because
it's the ick, I love it.

(16:15):
I love it so much.

Julia PF (16:16):
Me too.
I'm kind of obsessed with it.
Yeah.

Laura May (16:20):
Awesome.
So I understand that your first bookwas actually about this ick, but
moreover your experiences in it, right?
So this your book, "NGOs mediating peace".
And so I mean, how did you do theresearch and what did you find?
Like, what was the takeaway?

Julia PF (16:38):
Yeah, thanks.
So this book, it tookeight years of research.
It came out of my doctoral work,and it really was born out of
being a practitioner and working onsupporting civil society organizations.
So community organizations in Myanmar,at the time of negotiations, work on

(16:59):
this idea of inclusive peace and and so.
This very big idea and peace mediationcircles today, both academic both
practitioner circles, that inclusivepeace is incredibly important.
And is not just a nice to have,it's absolutely necessary if you
want to have peace agreements belegitimate, sustainable, implementable.

(17:24):
And I'm very much interested in this idea.
And a lot of my research isabout norms in mediation.
And there were three of us on aresearch team and we all looked
at the idea of norms in mediationand how they're being promoted.
And if we think of what's thenorm, we think about it as a social
norm of things that ought to be.
Things that should be ratherthan what things actually are.

(17:45):
So, you know, a

Laura May (17:46):
So an example might be neutrality.

Julia PF (17:49):
norm of neutrality, yeah, or gender equality.
So there's peace processes shouldbe more inclusive, mediation
processes should have more womenor youth, religious leaders, etc.
So this inclusive peace normis this holy grail idea of what
your peace process should be.
And my book is really about howinternational mediation, I would

(18:13):
say and argue, along with othercolleagues, has really changed where
it isn't about, two white men insuits flying in and and hammering
out brokering a ceasefire agreement,it's evolved to become something
much more about redefining a society.
That this is this this opportunitya society has to have this
rupture and then redefine itself.

(18:35):
Women are more included.
Women have more rights or and it's amassive debate of whether mediation
processes should be the site ofthese big societal questions at all.
And so that's a little bitwhat I take up in this book.
The book is really about how NGOs,so non governmental organizations,
that have really evolved to becomeprofessionalized mediation actors and

(18:59):
this has been a trend that's only we'veseen this only developed in the last
20 or 30 years with organizations suchas the Swiss Center for Humanitarian
Dialogue, the Finnish Crisis ManagementInitiative and then others from around
the world now really developing.
Really going into a country that'sexperiencing conflict and working

(19:19):
directly with the negotiating parties,whether that's government actors, or
often they're armed resistance, orsome people say rebel organizations.
And that's really new, because you usedto really have formal peace mediation
being defined by a high level diplomat.
And that's still very much the case.
But then there's all these othernew actors that have entered onto

(19:41):
the field and I have a chapter reallytalking about calling NGO mediators
cowboys or mavericks because the juryis still a little bit out on what
these groups bring to bear on a process.
Are they really mavericksthat are redefining the field?
Bringing in new practices that aregetting things done, basically, when
really formal processes are stuck?

(20:02):
Or a group is maybe let's say listedas a terrorist organization so
you can't have dialogue with them.
They would take it upon themselvesto go in and prepare the ground
for maybe negotiations, so thatwhen the time is better or more
politically palatable, it's possible.
Anyways, then there's a wholeother part of this debate that's

(20:23):
saying they're just cowboys.
They don't care aboutpolitical parameters.
International law.
That they're just kind of doing whatever,and it's talking with rebel groups,
and making everything a lot moremessy and we need to coordinate this.
So it's really interesting.
I'm like a fly in the wall, framingthe debate and sort of loving it.
So that's what I talked about in the book.

(20:44):
But NGOs also have this other reallyimportant piece about them that they
are not totally separate from civilsociety organizations, but they're also
producers of knowledge and we're comingback to this knowledge question of
what mediation should or shouldn't be.
And so you have these NGOs, workingwith the conflict parties, convening
them in back rooms etc of what weenvision mediation is, but also

(21:08):
writing handbooks, policy briefs.
Guidances about women's inclusion orcivil society inclusion or creating
a peace agreement that also hastransitional justice mechanisms,
which is dealing with questions andreally thorny questions of justice.
So all of this to say that it'sincredibly interesting, but there's

(21:29):
also a very big risk of when NGOs comeinto a place and promote norms which
per se are extremely important, right?
Gender equality and not arguingthat a norm like gender equality
and women's inclusion is bad andI'm putting that in air quotes.
It's that these perceptions or thisidea of what inclusion is isn't really

(21:52):
connecting or I think in my opinion,acknowledging what gender and inclusion
already means in the Myanmar context,which I write about in the book.
And I think this is the the decolonialcritique that other decolonial authors
have made it's like, it's a so calleduniversal norm that that I think needs to

(22:14):
be mediated and needs to be connected tothe ideas, and narratives, beliefs, the
community structures, that are alreadythere and not just imposed or transposed
in this beautiful and important package.
So that's what the book is a little bitabout in that way and and it came out of
this idea that I was observing there andit was just this relentless promotion

(22:35):
of women's inclusion, which was reallyimportant and the women was taking it up.
But in what way and what modalitiesand when were these training workshops?
When were these knowledge products?
When was this research actuallyintegrating with Burmese language,
with Burmese cosmologies, withTheravada Buddhism, which was a
huge element of the life and cultureand life ways of that community.

(22:58):
So that's, that's in the book.
So read the book.
This is my shameless plug.

Laura May (23:03):
Everyone read the books.
Yeah.
That sounds fascinating.
And I mean, I think you really highlightedthis, this challenge of mediation.
I'm going to go off country fora moment because as you were
talking, it reminded me of this ideaof normative power Europe, right?
Where they're like, oh,the EU is normative power.

(23:24):
It spreads norms.
And so if you want to become acandidate country, whatever, you have
to do things along the lines of genderequality, along the lines of like
LGBT rights and so on and so forth.
Even where those norms mightnot be met within the EU.
And so it's treated as a normative power.
And I remember actually doingit during my master's research,
discourses from Russia, one of ourleast favorite countries right now.

(23:44):
But it had this argument of,well, these are not our norms.
You know, we have our ownidea of what sovereignty looks
like, our own idea of these.
And so then bringing that back to sort ofthe peace context, you can sort of see,
well, yeah, like when we go into a countryand we say, all right, we'll here's the
peace process, yes, we'll be flexible,we'll be inclusive, whatever, but here are

(24:07):
some underlying values we're going to beusing and we're not going to negotiate on.
We can see that it is anorm spreading exercise.
And, you know, you, you mentionedearlier that these mediation then
becomes about redefining society.
It's not about resolving oneproblem or two problems or
violence in whatever context.
It's like, no, no, no,we're going to rebuild.

(24:29):
And the norms that havebecome fundamental to that new
society haven't grown there.
They've been imposed and they've beenbrought in as part of this process.
And so it's kind of a socializing thing.
And so I understand that'swhere the decolonializing
argument comes from, right?
That you know, you might havethe best intentions in the world.
And yes, you want people to stopbeing violent and you want people

(24:50):
to be emancipated and what haveyou, but it's still coming from you.
It's being imposed.
And it just makes me wonder, I mean,who are the right people to do the
right mediation in the right way?
Because I don't, I don't know.
It's a tricky one.

Julia PF (25:06):
Yeah, that is, that is the question and that's the question that the
book ends on, because there is no answer.
So you know in the book I illustrateboth the intended consequences
of how they promoted this norm.
So just saying, like, how thingsended up the way they planned, but
also the unintended consequences.
In a lot of ways, this peace agreementthat was signed in 2015, after

(25:27):
all this period of negotiations,notwithstanding the current context
under the authoritarian coup that'sunfolding right now in Myanmar.
In a lot of ways, it ended up as a moreexclusive outcome, and I talk a little
bit about why in the book but, you know,civil society actors ended up becoming
crowded out, and it overpromised alot of things, and there were a lot
of critiques about it, but then, yeah,then you kind of step back and zoom

(25:50):
out a little bit more, and you think ofwell, should NGO mediators or mediators
in general be promoting norms or not?
And, the book shows that they can,it actually works, like there's
a lot of mechanisms and all thisthis stuff that they can use.
But that's the kind of soul searchingunsettling question that we need to ask
ourselves, and I don't have an answerwhat I tried to allude to is that.

(26:15):
I don't think there should be doing awaywith, you know, international mediation
and structures that are needed toaddress conflict, because we're seeing
that now and it's a way bigger questionthan the scope of this book and this our
conversation today, but I think therejust absolutely needs to be a baseline
better understanding of existing ideas,cultural practices, historically,

(26:39):
like the Myanmar peace process did notstart in 2011 when the country opened
up after decades of authoritarianrule, and a lot of programming
was being designed as if it did.
And so a lot of very a historicalprogramming and design.
I think these are all very achievablethings if we all as peace practitioners

(27:00):
and researchers start asking ourselvesthose questions when we're designing
programs, designing our research,like again, going back to these ick
questions of why am I going and why amI designing a peace building inclusive
women process in Myanmar right now?
Why me?
Why my organization?

(27:20):
For what purpose?
How can it make a contribution?
Why is my research in Myanmar rightnow or any other country experiencing
conflict or any other society?
And and be honest with ourselveslike why did I choose this as a
case versus other places versussomewhere in my own home community.
So in terms of the question shouldit's like, yes, but with a lot

(27:43):
of caveats and a lot more care.

Laura May (27:46):
I love that.
More caveats and more care.
It reminds me because asyou know, Juan Diaz was my
professor, you know him as well.
We both taught his course.
And I remember he ended alecture one time on this idea.
He was like, if you want to be apeace mediator or to deal with this
kind of conflict, start at home.

(28:06):
You don't need to go somewhereelse and probably that
somewhere else doesn't need you.
Like, start at home.

Julia PF (28:13):
100%.
There you go.
That's the book.
Thanks, Juan Diaz.
And, you know, in listeningto his podcast episode.
I mean, it's exactly that.
It's exactly where I thinkthe field needs to go.
And I guess it's a nice segueto my second shameless plug,

Laura May (28:26):
I'm so here for this.
Yes.
Tell me about your new publication.

Julia PF (28:29):
Yeah.
So it's called the Power to Protect.
And it's this report that I coauthored with a dear friend, a dear
colleague, Lorelai Higgins Parker.
She's a Métis cultural mediator,someone you should definitely
have on the podcast at one point,
we received this award by theInternational Development Research Center.
So it's a Canadian institution, andthey have these awards every year to

(28:53):
write about women, peace and security.
And the theme that yearwas on climate change.
And well, we were thinking ofdifferent places that we could write in.
And at the time, My work at the Universityof Ottawa and the Ottawa dialogue, we
had been working for the last 3 yearson creating a very small network on

(29:14):
indigenous and non indigenous communities.
Scholars and practitioners locatedin Turtle Island, which again is
the indigenous term across manyindigenous communities for the
space known as North America.
So we wanted to come together anddiscuss different worldviews.
So I would say a Western worldview of,let's say, informal mediation, track two

(29:34):
diplomacy, these sort of dialogue spaces.
Whether there was any common groundwith indigenous ways of moving through
conflict, which were relevant to thecommunities that we were working with,
which was specifically and a big part ofit, the Mohawk community in Kahnawake.
So in the end Lorelei was a partof that network and that has been

(29:54):
super powerful and super formative.
I identify as a non indigenous settlerimmigrant, but also as a colonized person
coming from the Philippine diaspora.
And so there was a lot there, and wewere like, why don't we write about
Canada, and about Turtle Island as asite of conflict, and then we wrote

(30:15):
this whole thing about how for manyindigenous communities conflict is
structural, conflict is, you know, notviolent with sort of the, the dominant
images that you see of what conflictis in the world, and we won't get into

Laura May (30:29):
not about the bloodshed.

Julia PF (30:30):
Yeah, it's like structural latent violence and oppression
and climate change and the climatecrisis isn't this future thing,
it's here and for indigenouscommunities it's very much there.
And we got the grant and they hadtold us it's the first time they
funded something on on Canada, onTurtle Island, on their own space
because you know, it's in their name.

(30:51):
It's in their mandate to fundinternationally, but it was, you know,
we had champions in the institutionthat were like, No, we need it.
We need to change this.
We need to look at our own community.
So even that was a massive step in kindof undoing these knowledge production
structures, these structures that entrenchthis idea that conflict happens over
there and not in our own communities.

(31:11):
So then in the end, we basicallywrote it to tell a story and I had
never written anything like that.
You know, I got my PhD, I did my postdoc,I was trained as a political scientist
in qualitative research methods,da da da, jargon, jargon, jargon.
But I had to unlearn.
Everything.
And there were parts that were, again,so uncomfortable in terms of we had so

(31:34):
many instances, like the whole design wasabout engaging with different Indigenous
women leading community organizationsthat were mitigating the effects of
climate change in their societies.
And we looked in allthese different places.
We looked in NorthAmerica and Turtle Island.
So we went to Standing Rock.
We went where the No DAPL movement was.
So this Indigenous led protestmovement against the Dakota Access

(31:58):
Pipeline that was really 2016 to 2017.
This really widespread protest movement.
We were able to speak with women thereand we went all sorts of different places.
We went along the west coast ofTurtle Island to what's known as
Vancouver and Seattle today to lookat the urban indigenous experience.
And what I wanted to speak about wasthis process of doing the research was we

(32:21):
wanted to intentionally create a new wayof doing research that was both indigenous
and non indigenous and required, let'ssay there were elements of consent.
You're a researcher, you're a peaceresearcher, you go into a community
and you're trained that it isethical to be able to get informed
consent, which is very important.

(32:41):
Obviously it's a basic, it's a minimum.
But then when I was with Lore, wewere tryna go and meet communities.
She was like, if you bring thispaper as this person you've never
seen before and say, sign this, tellme your story, I'm gonna go away.
Like, what is that?
How is that gonna build trust?
What kind of emotionsis that gonna bring up?
So I basically followed her lead the wholeway, doing the research through what I

(33:05):
would learn as like a more indigenousway of knowing and being and doing of
showing up, being with the land, makingrelationships before anything else.
But an example, of what thisresearch process meant was what
does actually being with the landmean as a non indigenous person?
I had actually been quite separate fromnature and the natural world growing

(33:28):
up for a host of different reasons.
And it meant.
Driving and and drivingthrough the Dakotas.
It meant driving and being in water,doing water walks, visiting sacred sites,
something that just I had never hadthe opportunity to learn and unlearn.
And I think when you talk aboutwhat we found, women's agency and

(33:53):
Indigenous women's agency is reallysubtle and it's embodied through care.
It's embodied through generational care.
It's embodied through communityorganization, resistance, protest.
And all of these themes ininternational peace mediation
literature, in traditional approaches.
They're just sort ofadjacent and nice to have.

(34:14):
So I think that was what we're alsotrying to do with this research is
first locating Canada as a site ofconflict, locating Turtle Island
as a site of structural oppression.
And just because there is not blatant,violent aggression and violent political
violence doesn't mean it's not there.
So that's one piece.
And then the second is have adifferent lens to look at what women

(34:35):
are doing, what peace could mean, whatclimate change means and doesn't mean.
So , that's what I hopecomes out of this report.

Laura May (34:43):
I mean, it's really interesting.
Because when you mentioned this reportand being in Canada, sort of being about
indigeneity and conflict, I guess Iwas in some ways surprised that it was
about the structural component, right?
And I guess the reason it surprisedme is because when I hear about
conflict and indigeneity in NorthAmerica, Turtle Island, as I've just

(35:06):
learned, so thank you, I think aboutmore obvious violence for sure.
Like I think about people whoare trafficked or kidnapped or
killed without investigation.
And so I love the nuance you've broughthere that actually the violence people
are experiencing, obviously it goesbeyond that and it's structural and it's

(35:28):
deeply interlinked with land and withclimate and with culture and society.
I love that nuance.
So thank you for bringing that to my life.

Julia PF (35:38):
I mean, if I can say it opens up so many opportunities for us as
a field, as a peace mediation field.
If we expand our imagination of whatconflict is, then we also expand our
imagination of what peace can be.
And I think when we have things likeclimate change, of the climate crisis
that we all don't know what's coming.
I think it kind of humanizes andallows us to act more as a collective.

(36:02):
And I think that'swhat's exciting about it.
And I feel like it would be a supermissed opportunity if we just stayed
in our very linear small boxes ofwhat conflict is and what isn't.

Laura May (36:15):
And I mean, for me, and there's been a couple of podcast
episodes where we've touched ongender and climate a bit as well.
And sort of surviving, thriving,whatever, in the face of climate change.
So It is a holistic effort.
It's not just scientists in atower or somewhere doing something.
It's like, no, no, no.
It starts with people and it starts withpeople living different kinds of lives.

(36:37):
So, just thinking about positionality andcoming back to that, right so we can all
hold different positions in our lives.
One of the really key intersectionalcritiques in feminism, is that
white women can both be privilegedin terms of being white, but then
disadvantaged by being a woman.
As Black men can be privileged by beingmen, but disadvantaged by being Black

(36:59):
and, you know, structures of oppression.
And it makes me wonder about yourposition in Myanmar, because you said you
identify as a woman of color in academia,but you're also not from Myanmar.
So I'm wondering, like, how, howhave you sort of navigated these
identities and what has it meant andhow has it influenced your work there?
work

Julia PF (37:19):
Amazing question.
Something I've grappledwith for a really long time.
And yeah, that was a huge part ofmy research process and I think I
wrote like a four page thing aboutit in my dissertation and it did not
need to be that long but it clearlyI was like working through it.
It was really interesting because Iwas wearing lots of hats, and I felt

(37:41):
like I was filling different roles.
And I just had to navigate all of them.
So the first was being not only acritical researcher, a PhD student
trying to get access to interviews.
So, high level government actors or thekey representatives from armed ethnic
organizations as they were called, sothe negotiators, and then also working

(38:02):
with civil society organizations,and then working also at the same
time as a consultant working withthe same actors in a different hat.
So questions about access werereally important and keeping that
really separate, making sure that theinformation I was finding out from
my practice work and was privy towas not translating into my research.

(38:23):
So that was really important.
That was also doable, right?
There's mechanisms, there's waysthat you can design a process.
What was harder was dealingwith that inner inner feeling
of the insider outsider dynamic.
You know, I'm of Asian heritage and Ilook actually to a lot of my colleagues.
I look really Burmese.
I ended up living in Myanmar for 2 years.

(38:45):
First in the de facto capital of Yangon.
So not the official capital,but the de facto one.
And then in the southeast, in abeautiful city called Malamyayin,
which was located in Mon State andone of the ethnic nationalities there.
And a lot of Crowleys there thoughtI looked Mon or Shan and would
call me a Ma, which means sister.

(39:07):
But then even if I would say I wasfrom the Philippines, then I would
also be called a sister somehow.
And then there's that other piece.
I also introduced myself as beingfrom the Philippines, and then later
Canada, and then later Switzerland.
So I had these multiple identities,and it was interesting, I realized
after, how I used them to create trust,and also for myself to feel safer.

(39:31):
Also growing up as aminority in a lot of spaces.
I've grown up in NorthAmerica, and I live in Europe.
I'm in a minority in alot of these communities.
And so navigating that was interesting.
And then there's, well,I'll never forget this.
It was my first time in Yangon and I wassort of the assistant to a training that
was happening with women peace builders.
And I was gifted with Tamane,which is a Myanmar or a Burmese

(39:56):
sort of longhee or sarong in alot of cultures in Southeast Asia.
And then everyone was speaking to me inBurmese or thought I was the interpreter.
And so when I say like, I'm just wearingthis Tamane and they're like, okay.
So I actually actively did not wearthis anymore, especially in interviews.
I was gifted a lot cause it's abeautiful gift and I have a lot.

(40:16):
But yeah, it was this thingthat I realized I couldn't.
It wasn't authentic of me to present asBurmese, even though I think for other
people who maybe identify differently,it's clearly a gift or something else.
Very nuanced things to what Iwas wearing, to how I introduced
myself, to how I, I oriented myself.
I'm now trying actively to only designresearch projects in the Philippines

(40:40):
or in Turtle Island, and even ifI go to the Philippines, I would
still, you know, I left the country.
My family left for different reasons.
The political situation at the time inthe eighties under the Marcos regime.
I, I, what is being a Filipina andbeing a Filipina researcher in there.
So I am super Filipina if I'm in thediaspora community in Vancouver, but then

(41:03):
am I also then in the Philippines whereI have a passive fluency in Tagalog,
but then wouldn't be able to speak andconduct interviews in Tagalog, much
less my mother's dialect of Ilongo.
So I think there's a lot there again,I think this is great that we're
focusing on identities, positionalities.

(41:27):
This is not disconnected.
It is all connected.
And I will die on thishill, because I think that's

Laura May (41:32):
Please don't.
I can't have guests dying on the podcast.

Julia PF (41:35):
yeah, let's not talk about dying on the podcast, but I will defend
this, that it's also, for me, it'sa feminist view of things, of really
just keeping everything connectedand having all of those threads as
we move through the world, or atleast if I move through the world
and what I strive to as a researcher.

Laura May (41:53):
Absolutely.
And I mean, without getting carriedaway, people are going to be like,
wow, they're really talking aboutpositionality for a long time.
But it's also something that I can reallyrelate to, honestly, I mean, cause I
identify as an immigrant, like here inSpain, more broadly for Europe as well.
And there's that idea, especially whenyou travel a lot and you live in different

(42:15):
countries, like you can never reallygo home again because you're different.
And so, I mean, I still don't do researchon Australia where I'm originally from.
Because it still feels too close andI feel honestly, like, really ashamed
of some of the politics that go onthere, so it's a bit too close to home.
But at the same time, a lot of my PhDresearch, was on Brexit as a case study,

(42:36):
and I found the UK very approachable.
I've lived there as well.
I had a full, what I would considercolonial education in Australia.
I had almost entirelyBritish school teachers.
And so it was that kind of insideroutsider experience that you talked about
where I can completely understand thisculture, I can write about it, but it's
also it's not me, like, and it definitely,I mean, to be fair, as an Australian

(42:57):
in the UK, you get a lot of passes ona lot of things, like we're allowed
to be convicts, so that's very nice.
And, you know, having lived in Russiaand in Belgium as well, I've had
that inside and outside experience.
And it's at this point, it's like,well, I don't have just one identity.
I've been all of theseplaces I've lived in.
And so it does make things,cause you're always going to

(43:18):
be a little bit of an outsider.
Yeah, and that makes it really interestingdynamic, whether it's research or
whether it's just living your life.
It's like, well, I'm an immigrantand you, you know, you own that,

Julia PF (43:30):
I think it's also a beautiful perspective and a lot of my thoughts
and reflections are coming from thisangle of like, right, research your own
community, mediate in your own community.
And that's somethingthat I'm striving towards.
But it's also important to have outsiderperspectives and I think for me it's just,

(43:52):
and I'm learning every day and sometimesI think I do get a bit hypersensitive,
maybe paralysis by analysis or I don'tknow, this, this phrase, but it's,

Laura May (44:02):
You've got a PhD.
Therefore you are neurotic.
I'm sorry.
There's no way to get away from it.
That's the rule.

Julia PF (44:07):
Thank you for naming that I wanted to say that I completely agree.
But yeah, I think there's a point.
And again, it's not saying hey I can't,research some case or context that
I literally didn't grow up in . No,there's also no point to that I think.
We all have a lot tolearn from each other.
But yeah, that's what I'm striving to.

(44:27):
And it's helped a lot with the ick.
Yeah.

Laura May (44:31):
Back to the ick!
I was hoping we'd get there.
Awesome.
Okay.
And so what's next for you?
What's next in your research?

Julia PF (44:43):
So there's

Laura May (44:43):
Or in your life as well.
That's also allowed.
You're not just a researcher.
We have multiple identitiesas we've established.

Julia PF (44:49):
Absolutely.
So I just joined the Centerfor Security Studies at ETH
Zurich as a Senior Researcheras part of their mediation team.
So still working inthe world of mediation.
And we have a really excitingbook project that we're developing
on mediation process design.
And so there's this idea that'sin many mediation circles of this

(45:09):
elusive concept of process design.
Which is you have your mediation processand then what are the core elements of
your strategy, your structure, your style.
You as a mediator, how you design theprocess essentially, but within that,
it's this idea of all of these sort ofstructural factors, timing, communication

(45:33):
skills, the sort of nuts and bolts.
But then there's also bigger, morephilosophical questions of can a process
actually be designed or is it a series ofstrategic reactions to what's happening
and in our field of the conflict context.
So it's really exciting and I thinkthere's a lot of different views that I'm
going to bring in from my past researchinto this space because I think there's

(45:56):
a tendency for thinking of process designin a very linear fashion, sequencing.
So we're going to makea big old mess of it.
Yeah, and then come out with someconcepts that can ideally help
mediation practitioners and scholars.
So that's what's next.
And then I'm working on a few otherreally exciting book projects.
One of them is a book onthe apocalypse and code.

(46:20):
Yeah, just

Laura May (46:21):
Which one, what are we doing and what genre?

Julia PF (46:24):
And that's the core question, Laura.
You got it, because Samantha Marie Gamez.
We're coming together with an editedvolume on how apocalyptic imaginary, so
the climate crisis, destruction, death andwar are often framed in media and film and
the news cycle as apocalyptic narratives.

(46:45):
You know, the Four Horsemen ofthe Apocalypse, it's apocalyptic.
Okay,

Laura May (46:48):
Well, no, cause now I want to know, right?
Like what is the equivalentof Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse from other places?

Julia PF (46:54):
That's exactly what our book is trying to get at.
So,

Laura May (46:57):
Very cool.
Oh

Julia PF (46:58):
very cool.
Yeah, so the whole book is like peacebuilding is an apocalyptic sort of
juncture, a critical juncture where we gotto figure out where we're going because
the problems are of this magnitude.
What do we want to bring with us?
What do we want?
What do you want to leave behind?
How can we rebirth the field?
And it's again this idea ofproblematizing what do we think

(47:18):
of when we think of apocalypse?
It's the Four Horsemen.
There's the whore of Babylon.
But it's also very Judeo Christianas uh, I learned a big word.
It's a real big word, but I learned it,for this project, it's called eschatology.
And it's the field of study thathas to do with, yeah, the end
of the world and judgment day.

Laura May (47:38):
That's so cool.
I mean, it sounds likethe name of a dinosaur.

Julia PF (47:42):
It's amazing.
Yeah.
so we have a lot of incredible authorsthat we're bringing together to talk about
other ways about thinking the apocalypse.
So whether from Hinduism or fromBuddhism, from indigenous cosmology,
and what we're finding is that alot of them are circular, right?
It's something that's not an end.
The apocalypse is not the endof the world as we seem to

(48:03):
think.
It's a cycle and it's theopportunity for rebirth.
So that's what the book is about.
So there's two things.
I have two, like, two very,very extreme research interests.
One is really, how are we makingour field as it is, moving it
forward, process design, workingwith things and concepts we know.
And then the other is like, how can Iget weird and still make the field really

(48:28):
amazing and just expand the imagination.
So that really, reallymotivates me as a researcher.
Yeah.

Laura May (48:35):
That's so cool.
I love it.
And so you wrote in your email, as faras what we're talking about today, "dot,
dot, dot, and witches question mark".
And yeah, I'm really interestedin what you meant by that.
Because I've seen sort of a revival ofwitch imagery and discourse in the last

(48:55):
few years in connection particularlywith feminism and other ways of being.
Is that where you're coming from oris it like a fashion choice or what?
Like, tell me, what do you,what do you want to talk about?

Julia PF (49:06):
It could also be.
Yes, it's exactly that.
So you touched on it for sure.
So I think as a connection to this bookon the apocalypse and peace building.
One of the themes that we were exploring,is this idea of the image of the witch.
And what's been not counted as a conflictand peace building also historically, when

(49:27):
we think about witch trials and especiallyin Europe, and I know that there's a
different history in Salem and in theUnited States, part of Turtle Island,
but yeah, it's just, I love this notion.
I love this feminist reclamation ofit, but also understanding that witch
hunting is also very much going on incultures today in different parts of,

(49:49):
Africa, different parts of the world.
But I think image that I have assomebody that was raised in North
America on Hocus Pocus and other things,

Laura May (49:58):
Oh yeah.
Charmed.
Yeah.
I was all about Charmed.

Julia PF (50:01):
Charmed, and there's incredible literature that's coming out, feminist
literature, there's a great book calledWaking the Witch by Pam Grossman, and
I think that in this day of age, ofthis idea of communities of women and
women that are reclaiming and redefiningroles of motherhood and care of healers.
And then also kind of understandingthis history of misogyny, basically.

(50:27):
It wasn't that it was just peopleidentifying as women that were put on
the trials, but it was really targeted.
And if you go down the rabbit hole ofwitches and podcasts and understanding
how they came to be, there's so many touchpoints for me about communities that are
divided by a traumatic event or experienceand then needing to find a scapegoat and

(50:52):
then those scapegoats then often beingeconomically oppressed or, at the time in
in

Laura May (50:58):
Or women over 40.

Julia PF (50:59):
Women of authority that didn't fit societal norms like there's
so much there, especially when welook at our societies, in so much
division so much polarization so muchscapegoating so much blaming communities.
Fear and mistrust.
There's so much that as people interestedin mediating societal conflict, we
can use as an imaginary, as an image.

(51:20):
And then there's alsofeminist layers there.
There's layers of what wasactually seen as witchcraft.
A lot of them were indigenous waysof healing for some communities
or just communal ways of healing,midwifery, women in science,
there's so much.
And so I think, you know,there's, there's, there's a lot.
So that's a future future research dream.

(51:42):
But if, again, if I could just write onstuff that I would love to write about and
then also make the field I work in better.
That's like the goal.

Laura May (51:51):
It's very cool.
But you know, as you mentionedSalem, I sort of had to laugh a
little bit to myself because itwas dramatic foreshadowing for my
life in that it was my year 10 ormy year 12 English project, right?
I wrote it on The Crucible.
And what I researched was the tensionbetween individual freedom and societal

(52:13):
oppression in the witch trials.
And that's a lot of what it comes downto, in terms of these competing norms.
So like it was dramatic foreshadowingfor me then going to political science
and keep continuing going on thistension between like individual and
society and how do we move forward?
So

Julia PF (52:29):
But when you think about, I think that's brilliant, because when you
think about peace building, people thatare peace building are at the edge,
they're breaking out of those norms,they're breaking out of narratives.
And then often they are demonizedor vilified or ostracized.

Laura May (52:45):
And then we get onto my PhD research, which is all about blame
and how we use it to create villains.

Julia PF (52:50):
There you

Laura May (52:51):
it's all one big project.
I didn't know it at the time,but yeah, absolutely wild.
Anyway, so for those who are interestedin these fascinating areas of research
and are interested in learning moreabout your work, where can they find you?

Julia PF (53:07):
Yes, thank you.
So I do have a website,so juliapalmianofederer.
com.
So there you can look at mypublications, the projects I'm
working on, different podcasts.
My new book, NGOs Mediating Peace,Promoting Inclusion in Myanmar's
Nationwide Ceasefire Negotiationshas been published by Paul Gray
Macmillan, and it's open access,which is something that was really

(53:30):
important to me and a big achievementI'm really proud of, so it's available
for download on the Springer website.
And the Power to Protect is availableon the Ottawa Dialogue website.
And you can find out more on my websiteor the CSS ETH Zurich website as well.

Laura May (53:49):
I will include links to all of that in the podcast description.
So if people can track you down and thenask you about, witches or apocalypse
or de colonialism, like anything,you're, you're out there for all it

Julia PF (53:59):
I love everything.

Laura May (54:01):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much again for joiningme today, Julia, and for everyone else.
Until next time, this is LauraMay with the Conflict Tipping
podcast from Mediate.com

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Researching the end of the (peacebuilding) world as we know it with Dr Julia Palmiano Federer [Ep. 31]