Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies 

The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale pursues excellence in research, teaching, and capacity-building across societies to bring about a more informed, inclusive, and flourishing world. Its regional councils and global programs promote interdisciplinary, transnational scholarship, teaching, and exchanges on topics including conflict, resilience, regional history, political violence, and more. Examples of recent coursework related to conflict, peacebuilding, and rebuilding offered in affiliation with MacMillan Center follow. 

• On Ukraine, Professor Andrei Kureichik is teaching a Comparative Literature course on “Art and Resistance in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine,” which examines the role that protest art has played in the struggle of society against authoritarianism and totalitarianism. It focuses on the example of the Soviet and post-Soviet transformation of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, and also examines the art of protest against the modern post-Soviet dictatorships of Alexander Lukashenka in Belarus and Vladimir Putin in Russia, the protest art of the Ukrainian Maidan, and the anti-war movement of artists against the Russian-Ukrainian war.  

• Professor Lauren Young is also teaching a course in Political Science on “The Geopolitics of War in Ukraine,” which examines the roots of the conflict, the role of international institutions, the humanitarian effects of war, and the role of the international community in mitigating the human cost of conflict and the broader economic and policy implications. 

• The MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies has partnered with departments and schools to bring scholars from the Middle East to Yale to enhance understanding of the current conflict, its economic and political roots, and options for the future. Supplementing regular faculty courses such as Professor Marcia Inhorn’s “Culture and Politics in the Contemporary Middle East,” and Professor Jonathan Wyrtzen’s “World War I and the Making of the Modern Middle East,” new courses in academic year 2024-2025 to be listed by Middle East Studies and Political Science include “The Politics of Israel in Comparative Perspective,” and “Politics and Economics of the Middle East”. This year, the MacMillan Center’s Council on Middle East Studies has devoted sessions in its fall colloquium to focus on the current conflict in the region.  

• At the Jackson School of Global Affairs, Professor Bonnie Weir offers a course on “War and Peace in Northern Ireland,” which draws on her deep knowledge and connections in the region to look at questions about the insurgency and uneasy peace in Northern Ireland following the peace agreement of 1998 that formally ended “The Troubles.” The course considers how both the conflict and the peace have been messier and arguably more divisive than most outside observers realize. 

For an overall understanding of the economic roots of conflict, MacMillian affiliate and Professor Gerard Padro teaches a popular course on “The Economics of Conflict,” which applies microeconomic techniques to the analysis of internal violent conflict, including civil wars, terrorism and insurgencies, its causes and consequences. Topics include forced migration, ethnic conflict, the long-term consequences of war, and individual choices to participate in violence. 

Conflict, Resilience, and Health (CRH)  

The Conflict, Resilience, and Health Program is an interdisciplinary group that works to build resilience and health in communities afflicted by armed conflict or structural violence. Led by Professor Catherine Panter-Brick, Bruce A. and Davi-Ellen Chabner Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs, this program engages with academics, practitioners, and policy makers to promote innovations in global health research and to evaluate resilience-building interventions. 

Identity & Conflict Lab (ICL)

The Identity & Conflict Lab (ICL) conducts problem-driven research in the social sciences with a focus on conflict and identity politics. It integrates insights from numerous disciplines and promotes the application of sophisticated quantitative and qualitative methods to explore questions in conflict studies and in the field of identity politics. It unifies the strengths and different skill sets of experimentalists, applied statisticians, archival researchers, and ethnographers to deepen understanding of violent inter-group conflict across countries and over time. Recent ICL projects have focused on how to best reduce conflict and improve relations between migrants and locals in the European Union, including Greece and Germany. Nicholas Sambanis, Kalsi Family Professor of Political Science, is the ICL’s founder and faculty director. Learn more.

Peacebuilding Initiative (PBI)  

The Peacebuilding Initiative (PBI) at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs works toward understanding pathways to peace and documenting how policy efforts can build a more lasting peace. Faculty affiliates are leading a global comparative study to help realize a more peaceful twenty-first century, including multi-site research with partners in Costa Rica, Jordan, Mauritania, United Kingdom, as well as with New Haven communities and the United Nations. The initiative hosts an annual colloquium and speaker events to consolidate lessons learned and develop the peacebuilding network anchored at Yale. The 2025 Peacebuilding Colloquium will be held April 8. 

The Peacebuilding Initiative also works to develop peace-based course offerings across the university, through which students learn to think critically about what drives conflict and sustainable peace. 

Fourteen Yale undergraduate and five Yale graduate courses relevant to conflict and peace are taught by Jackson-affiliated scholars; four of these were newly designed for spring 2024. Courses are offered across the subjects of Global Affairs, History, Political Science, Religion, Management, Health Studies, East Asian Studies, American Studies, Anthropology and Ethics, Politics & Economics. They have included, among others,  

GLBL 6265 – Rebuilding Nations After Atrocity (David Simon)  

GLBL 289/PLSC 431/HIST 245J – War and Peace in Northern Ireland (Bonnie Weir) 

HLTH 302 – Peacebuilding: History, Health, and Policy (Cara Fallon) 

GLBL 313 – The United Nations on the Ground (Jessica Faieta) 

GLBL 430 – Turning Points in Peace-building (Bisa Williams) 

AMST 269 – Digital War (Madiha Tahir) 

Peace Fellowship 

The Peace Fellowship at the Jackson School’s International Leadership Center brings emerging leaders on peace to Yale for an intensive period of research, mentoring, and training; and to participate in high-level strategy events on peace and conflict resolution. The fellowship is managed in collaboration with Inter Mediate, a leading peacemaking organization dedicated to ending armed conflict, and its CEO Jonathan Powell, who was the lead British negotiator for the Good Friday Agreement. The current and inaugural Peace Fellow is from Haiti.   

Humanitarian Research Lab 

Based at the Yale School of Public Health, the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) uses the fusion of open-source and remote sensing data to develop innovative methodologies to document humanitarian crises and assess the public health of communities impacted by atrocities related to conflict. The HRL works with scholars and organizations around the world, including those in conflict zones.  

HRL faculty teach the course “Health in Humanitarian Crises,” which provides students with foundational knowledge and tools of public health in humanitarian crises, particularly armed conflict.  

Training healthcare workers from conflict zones  

In 2023, Yale physicians working with Doctors for Ukraine brought six critical care doctors from Ukraine to train at Yale, where they worked with 74 Yale healthcare professionals to learn new pain control techniques, kidney transplant medicine, and high-risk pregnancy management—techniques they could take back to their country to share with colleagues dealing with the casualties of conflict.  

Rebuilding Ukraine 

In September 2022, Yale School of Art Professor Marta Kuzma co-organized a major online international conference titled “The Reconstruction of Ukraine: Ruination / Representation / Solidarity,” in collaboration with the Lviv Center for Urban History and other institutions. Co-sponsored by Yale’s MacMillan Center and Office of International Affairs, this multidisciplinary conference considered the effects of the conflict and how to rebuild Ukraine’s architecture in its broadest sense: its cities, architecture, art, and culture, as well as how to repair the psychological traumas of the invasion and war.  

The conference itself has resulted in numerous publications and ongoing initiatives.