from Kate's Facebook video with Natalia - see link in story

My time of taught courses at University of Bradford is a quickly coming to a close -- I only have four weeks till the end of the semester and four essays to complete! My classes here have been thoroughly enriching, not solely due to the lecturers but also to the wide range of diversity among the students. Many students here have years of experience in the practitioner field (e.g. a UN Peacekeeper from Bangladesh, a Ugandan Member of Parliament who also runs her own female empowerment NGO, a security and arms researcher from an organisation in Columbia that helped shape public policy) and often bring new perspectives and insight to our class discussions. I have really enjoyed taking a step back to explore the big ideas around peace, conflict, and conflict resolution.

Concerning Rotary, it has been amazing. I really love my group of Rotary Fellows -- we are diverse and not afraid to debate each other about issues of the world but can still grab a beer and explore a nearby English village together. Actually, I went to Bogota, Columbia at the beginning of December to attend a peace technology conference called Build UP and stayed with the parents of one of my Rotary Fellows. They showed me around Bogota which was wonderful. Plus the peace technology conference was absolutely amazing -- there are some really amazing ideas being tested out in Colombia. That trip was completely funded through my conference stipend provided by Rotary.

At the beginning of this year, Rotary hosted a trip for us to go to Norway to meet the Uppsala Fellows and visit prominent peace institutions based in Oslo. Here is a blog post I wrote for our RPF (Rotary Peace Fellows) blog about that: http://blogs.brad.ac.uk/rotary-peace-centre/oslo-v.... In February we attended a Rotary Peace Conference in Coventry, UK were a few of us (including myself) ended up leading some discussions about the usefulness of the Rotary Peace Fellowship and how to invest in peace. It was really insightful since it reminded me how few people in Rotary know about the fellowship and the "output" of is unclear to many. I have done quite a few speaking engagements at various Rotary Clubs in the northern UK which has been a great way for me to raise awareness about RPF, talk about peace technology and Syria, and practice my public speaking skills! The Rotary clubs here in the UK are quite different from what I've seen in the US -- small and fairly informal.

This summer I will be conducting my Applied Field Experience with Search for Common Ground in Beirut, working on their Track II Mediation on Syria and helping with their business development projects promoting private-public partnerships for peacebuilding initiatives in Lebanon. I start in the middle of the June and I believe the internship will be about three months. During that time I will also be working on my dissertation... eek! I have chosen a topic but need to start collecting the literature and writing things down. I will be looking at the role that social media played in changing the conflict actors in the Syrian conflict and how conflict analysis has changed due to access to big data, using the Syrian conflict as an example. I am really excited to dive in but it is quite a bit to do.

Also, I forgot to mention that the Rotary Peace Centre - University of Bradford Facebook page has uploaded quite a bit about our travels. Here are a few links to its recent posts that include me:

https://www.facebook.com/UBRotaryPeace/posts/60036... (pictures from our trip to France and Belgium to visit WWI memorials)

https://www.facebook.com/UBRotaryPeace/videos/5999... (video of me and colleague Natalia)

https://www.facebook.com/UBRotaryPeace/posts/59329... (from a crisis simulation we did in the quaint town of Haworth where the Bronte sisters lived)

Finally, I am an "ambassador" for the Institute of Economics and Peace which is a partnership IEP has with Rotary International to educate them more about IEP's quantitative measuring of peace and conflict. I worked with them briefly when I was at The Carter Center and I am so excited to be learning more about how they produce their Global Peace Index and getting a chance to speak on their behalf.