Working Toward Peace and Reconciliation in Myanmar: Abating Buddhist-Muslim Tensions

Seed Grant Award Year

2012

CLAS Seed Grant In recent months, Buddhist-Muslim violence has threatened to derail democratic reforms currently underway in Myanmar, formerly Burma. Prof. Schober and Prof. Saikia will organize an international conference on strategies for peace among Buddhist and Muslim communities in Myanmar, facilitated by the Center for Asian Research. This conference will address academic inquiries into the historical and cultural context of past violence and develop practical strategies for building capacities for peace among community leaders, such as Buddhist monks and Muslim Imams in Arakan, Burma. Based on the results of this expert consultation, they will submit a two-year grant application to develop and facilitate capacity building training for community leaders to implement practical strategies for peace and reconciliation.

This project was sponsered by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Institute for Humanities Research.

Principal Investigator(s)

Juliane Schober, Director, Center for Asian Research and Professor of Religious Studies
Yasmin Saikia, Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies, Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, Professor of History