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In the United States, trust in law enforcement is plummeting alongside increased crime rates and police-involved killings, primarily of unarmed black men, making this social issue of imminent importance. Moreover, globally, security actor reform and relationship-building between communities and security forces is essential to post-conflict reconstruction and violence prevention. This research examines Outward Bound's Police Youth Challenge (PYC) program with officers and youth in Baltimore to assess the long-term impact of encounter-based peace education programs that use experiential peacebuilding to bridge divides between youth and security actors. To achieve this goal, interviews, focus groups, and observations were conducted with youth, officers, and key informants, and we conducted analysis of secondary data collected by Outward Bound and external evaluators. We found that PYC reduced intergroup anxiety and threat through building trust and facilitating mutual humanization between the youth and officers, which countered officers' meta-dehumanization. However, challenges arose in participants generalizing these attitudes to the broader population outside of the contact situation. Consequently, we recommend follow-on activities to sustain transformations and promote their generalization to other out-group members. These findings suggest the importance of utilizing experiential peacebuilding to improve attitudes and relationships between security actors and the local populations they police.

Encounter-based peace education programmes promote social cohesion and motivate youth to become peacebuilders. However, participants struggle to sustain these transformations in conflict contexts. This article draws from interviews and focus groups with alumni from four programmes that brought Pakistani youth to the US and other sources to examine these participants' long-term transformations. It argues that the programmes' emphasis on service-oriented activities led to participants' motivation to improve their communities because of the social capital built through these programmes. Connecting with strangers across conflict differences also resulted in participants' increased openness towards opposing groups. Consequently, alumni implemented projects to benefit their communities in Pakistan but were often unable to explicitly promote social cohesion because of sociopolitical constraints. Despite these challenges, the programmes emphasising community action in the US and in Pakistan increased participants' peacebuilding motivation and helped youth to maintain it as their projects reinforced their attitudinal transformations promoting social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International studies students are often interested in understanding contexts of conflict and war and working with affected populations. Although various research has assessed different pedagogical tools for increasing students' understanding of war experiences and reducing the perceived distance between such populations, virtual encounters are an understudied means for achieving these aims. This article examines how a US international studies course integrated virtual dialogue sessions with Afghan students to reduce the distance between Americans and Afghans. Accordingly, we conducted pre- and post-surveys and interviews, engaged in participant observation, and analyzed reflection papers to understand how US students' views transformed from the program. We find that American students learned about the precarity and resilience of Afghans and recognized their humanity. Moreover, participants developed outgroup trust, reduced intergroup anxiety, and in some cases developed empathy for the other group. Students experienced these shifts despite technological and logistical challenges, a language barrier, and the power imbalance, which led to ethical concerns for program instructors. Thus, we argue that virtual encounters can be an effective pedagogical tool for reducing distance between international studies students and war-affected populations and helping them to connect across group differences despite the inherent challenges in such programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of first-person action research in uncovering how positionality influences conflict resolution practice. Specifically, it examines the experiences of two scholar-practitioners conducting first-person action research in different conflict/post-conflict settings. The case studies include first-person action research on encounter programs with Pakistani youth and first-person action research examining peacebuilding engagement in the South Caucasus. We highlight the significant challenge posed by positionality for scholar-practitioners in our practice and research, particularly as members of one of the conflict parties, and present first-person action research as a constructive approach to enhance self-reflexivity and improve our practices. We argue that first-person action research highlights the fluidity of positionality and the value of building insider relationships to enhance conflict resolution practice. Concurrently, this research approach illuminates challenges resulting from insider identities because of assumed agreement. Thus, first-person action research is useful for improving conflict resolution practice because it highlights the various benefits and drawbacks of practitioners' positionalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]