Kent University (UNIKENT), Conflict Analysis Research Centre
The Conflict Analysis Research Centre at the University of Kent is a multi-disciplinary and multisite Faculty Research Centre. It is based in the Department of Politics and International Relations. The Conflict Analysis Research Centre carries on a long-standing Kent tradition of first hand academic involvement in current world issues by assisting parties in conflict through consultancy and analysis to identify creative and transformative options to reach workable agreements. The UNIKENT has a European implantation through its bases on the main UK campus in Canterbury, at the Brussels School of International Studies (BSIS) and at the Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale (ULCO), in Dunkerque, France, in keeping with the University’s role as an integral player of the University of the Transmanche, a new higher education initiative of the British and French governments which expresses the University’s mission to be Britain’s European University. For the past few years, the centre has been using its negotiation, mediation and diplomatic skills in working with parties in Moldova, Europe’s poorest country, to resolve trade and transit differences with Moldova’s break-away Transdniestr Region. The UNIKENT also incorporates the Reconciliation Forum and recently completed a year long project in Ghana working with refugees of the Liberian civil war. The UNIKENT offers consultancy and executive training programmes to provide knowledge and understanding of conflict issues of direct relevance to the needs of commerce and industry as well as to the public and voluntary sectors of our society. This programme is currently funded by a two year grant from the Higher Education Innovation Fund III Programme and by a one year Catalyst Fund grant from Kent Enterprise, the University’s office for innovation and partnership. Within INFOCON, the UNIKENT will focus on the relation between conflict policies and transnational communities, organise conflict analysis work shops with CSO participants and carry out field research on the case study communities in London and field-research in Kosovo.
Department of Politics & International Relations,
Rutherford College,
University of Kent,
Canterbury,
Kent, CT2 7NX
www.kent.ac.uk/politics/carc/
Hugh MIALL