Doing Peace! A Framework for Participatory Research in Peace and Security Studies

It outlines an agenda for participatory and transdisciplinary projects in peace and security studies. In the face of multiple crises and rising societal and political complexities, it takes this new paradigm to the study of peace and security. It takes up approaches such as citizen science, real-world labs, and action research that identify mechanisms for knowledge co-creation and emphasize the importance of public engagement in science for addressing real-world challenges.  

Our approach of doing peace! proposes a framework for participatory peace and security research that integrates findings from peace research with insights from critical security studies and broader debates on the merits and pitfalls of transdisciplinary research. The report sketches out what such new forms of knowledge co-creation, participatory research and critical engagement could look like and how they can contribute to studying peace and security with local stakeholders. To demonstrate the merits of this approach and to reflect on its ethical as well as practical challenges, we draw on several explorative projects of participatory peace and security research conducted in the city of Hamburg as part of the IFSH horizontal research focus doing peace! from 2020 to 2025.  

The report was co-written by Ann-Kathrin Benner, Hendrik Hegemann, Holger Niemann, Delf Rothe and Ursula Schröder.