I frequently consult with UN educational organizations, including UNESCO-APCEIU (Korea), the UN University for Peace (Costa Rica), UNESCO Bangkok, and the UN Office for Drugs and Crime (Austria). This work involves teacher-training, curriculum development, and advising on areas related to peace education and global citizenship education.
I have written several papers (e.g., PR, EPAT and KJER) and a book on this work titled The United Nations and Higher Education: Peacebuilding, Social Justice and Global Cooperation for the 21st Century. The book critically examines the United Nations promotion of higher education for peace and international understanding, particularly how the field sometimes unintentionally contributes to the reproduction of conflict, inequality and epistemic violence across diverse cultures. I empirically show this through an in-depth examination of peace curricula, pedagogy and policy in one United Nations higher education institution, where I indicate how dominant philosophical and pedagogical models that signify acceptable peace education ultimately undermine the very goals of educational peacebuilding.
In turn, I argue that the theoretical and pedagogical norms underlying much peace and conflict studies education must develop beyond the dominant psycho-social, rational and state-centric assumptions that permeate the field today if higher education is to better contribute to personal and societal peacebuilding.