Meet the 2022–2023 Georg Arnhold Fellows
The Georg Arnhold Scholarship, a partnership between the IRC’s Airbel Impact Lab and the Georg Eckert Institute’s Georg Arnhold Program on Education for Sustainable Peace, was established in 2020 to bridge the gap between research and practice. Through this initiative, selected researchers work closely with IRC staff in undertaking work to further both the interest of the IRC and the fellow. The fellowship provides an opportunity for researchers to bring their research, theories, and methods into the field, to develop new methods, and to learn from IRC’s ongoing projects.
This year’s fellowship program kicked off at the 2022 Georg Arnhold Summer Conference, which included an incubator session with Airbel designers. Participants in the incubator session were shortlisted and interviewed by a panel of IRC staff, including the supervisors for their potential research. Three individuals were then selected to undertake fellowships with the IRC and will be conducting their research December 2022 through April 2023. We are pleased to introduce our third cohort of fellows:
Xochilt Exue Hernandez Leiva
Peace First
Xochilt Exue Hernandez Leiva is a Nicaraguan-Colombian educator, social researcher, and anthropologist with multidisciplinary experience and practice in youth leadership, peace building, education and community development. She is currently one of Peace First’s Co-CEOs, an organization that empowers youth around the world with applied learning for social innovation and leadership opportunities. She holds a MPhil in Education from the University of Cambridge, with emphasis on Educational Leadership and School Improvement, and a Peace Studies diploma from the UN mandated University of Peace. With more than 8 years of experience in formal and non formal education, she has contributed to research projects focusing on peace education, non-violent strategic action, educational assessment, educational leadership, and entrepreneurship education. Additionally, she has participated in international research projects focused on Nicaragua’s social issues, especially international education, environmental management, and indigenous rights; and has extensive practitioner experience in implementing, monitoring, and evaluating community development projects in Latin America, through a participatory lens.
As a GEI Fellow, Xochilt will join the Education Research team to build on an existing line of research that explores learning spaces’ climate, socioemotional skills, and learning of both host and Venezuelan refugee children in Colombia. In 2020, the IRC conducted a learning assessment in Cucuta through which we collected data from 1,648 primary school-aged children. The aim of the assessment was to identify the needs of Venezuelan refugee children and inform regional and national actors with evidence to influence policy and programs. Results of the study suggest that a more in-depth analysis of school climate, more specifically bullying and victimization, and its relationship with learning is needed. Xochilt will elaborate on this work by conducting a review of existing literature on the status of academic and social emotional learning for children in contexts of conflict and crisis; contribute to a peer reviewed article on the Cucuta study; and write a blog describing the results of the study and their implications for policy and practice.
Following the conclusion of her work with the Education Research team, Xochilt will join the Power Research team to draw out lessons learned from the implementation of the Learn-to-Lead (L2L) capacity strengthening curricula across a variety of countries. L2L is one of the signature activities in IRC’s local governance and peacebuilding programming, it is an adaptable training curriculum for strengthening the capacity of people and community groups to serve as leaders and advocates for change within their communities. Xochilt will review relevant program documentation and conduct a series of interviews with country-based IRC and partner organization staff across Libya, South Sudan, Niger, Bangladesh, and Iraq to identify generalized best practice guidance to improve the content and delivery of L2L in the future. She will document these insights and learnings through a research report and presentation to the Governance Technical Unit and relevant country programs.
Dr. Ashmeet Kaur
Krishnamurti Foundation of India
Dr. Ashmeet Kaur is a peace education researcher and educator. She received her PhD in Peace Education from TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi, India. Drawing from the interdisciplinary perspectives of Peace Education, Sociology of Education, and Elite theory, her doctoral research deconstructs institutionalization of peace education through an ethnographic study of an elite school in India. Her last association was as an educator and a researcher with Krishnamurti Foundation of India, where she studied a unique pedagogical model grounded in community ethos, attending to the learning needs of disparate learners in violence and conflict affected settings. Ashmeet’s academic research has been published in journals including Cogent Education and The Eastern Anthropologist and has been presented to the European Educational Research Association and the British Sociological Association. In addition, she is the co-founder of the Class of Peace & Sustainability (CLAPS) Network, a dedicated group of educators, teachers & parents oriented towards values of peace and sustainability.
As a GEI Fellow, Ashmeet will join the Power Research team to draw common programmatic lessons learned from People-to-People (P2P) programming across a variety of contexts. P2P focuses on bringing together representatives of conflicting groups to interact purposefully in a safe space. This type of work addresses divisions within a community that may be rooted in group differences. The aim is to create opportunities for a series of interactions between conflicting groups to promote mutual understanding, trust, empathy, and resilient social ties, and ultimately reduce violence. She will review relevant program documentation and conduct a series of interviews with country-based IRC and partner organization staff across South Sudan, Tanzania, Libya, and Bangladesh to understand which programmatic approaches, principles, and mechanisms of P2P worked well for reducing the likelihood of violence, which did not, and why. She will document these insights and learnings through a research report and presentation to the Governance Technical Unit and relevant country programs.
Dr. Staci B. Martin
Portland State University
Staci B. Martin, EdD, is a learner, educator, Fulbright Scholar, Rotary Peace Fellow, and Speaking for Ourselves Action Research (SOAR) researcher whose work focuses on critical hope & despair, psychosocial and social-emotional learning, peacebuilding, and higher education in protracted and conflict contexts. She is a community-based action researcher that is committed to co-creating practical solutions that are culturally responsive and led by, for, and in partnership with the community, especially refugee communities. She has designed and implemented four psychosocial peace building educational programs in South Africa, Nepal, Jamaica, and Kenya. Dr. Martin is a faculty member of the School of Social Work at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon.
As a GEI Fellow, Dr. Martin will join the Education Research team to build on an existing line of research that explores learning spaces’ climate, socioemotional skills, and learning of both host and Venezuelan refugee children in Colombia. In 2020, the IRC conducted a learning assessment in Cucuta through which we collected data from 1,648 primary school-aged children. The aim of the assessment was to identify the needs of Venezuelan refugee children and inform regional and national actors with evidence to influence policy and programs. Results of the study suggest that a more in-depth analysis of school climate, more specifically bullying and victimization, and its relationship with learning is needed. Dr. Martin will elaborate on this work by conducting a review of existing instruments to assess the quality of school climate, including an evaluation of the pros and cons of these instruments for use in emergency settings.
