Nipissing University Peace Research Initiative (Agents of Peace)

The Agents of Peace project is an on-line database of interviews with individuals dedicated to peace-realization, hosted by the Nipissing University Peace Research Initiative. The database is intended for educators and researchers looking to explore the multitude of definitions of peace, with special attention directed to how understandings of peace are context-specific, being shaped both by the s

ituations within which peace-builders act, and by those individuals' expressions of agency. We're interested in how different people 'see' peace, and how those understandings of peace can be connected to the particular situations of agents of peace. One of the intended outcomes of this collection of interviews is a partnered multi-media exhibition at the Canadian War Museum, titled "Peace Now", scheduled to open in December of 2011. Our database will be a resource from which the Museum will draw on for testimonies from the front line agents actively promoting their visions of peace. We will also be co-depositing our interviews in the Canadian War Museum archives, with selected interviews collected by the War Museum shared into our database. We intend for the Agents of Peace project to be an opening into a larger dialogue on peace understood in its own terms, beginning by bearing witness to the works of people who are seeking to bring about peace in a sometimes dangerous, complex, and in their view, hopeful world.