About
Mission
Documenting Peace is an initiative launched from within the Peace Cluster of the Bosch Alumni Network to create a platform for exchange and cooperation among peacebuilders and to inspire new innovative approaches to peace. As a long-term goal, Documenting Peace intends to establish itself as a key actor in documenting the history of peacebuilding by conducting research focused on localized approaches to peace and global human rights policies.
Historical Perspective
In 1945, nations across the globe celebrated the end of the Second World War, which had marked humanity with mass violence and dire violations of human rights. This level of destruction left a lasting impact on many countries, communities, and families, with trauma passed from generation to generation. Seeking to understand the lasting consequences and implications of World War II for the future, many civil society organizations and cultural institutions have since designed educational programs, art initiatives, preservation projects, memory sites, and memorials to document, remember, and teach about this international crisis in human history.
Yet, in the latter half of the twentieth century, new conflicts, violence, mass atrocities, discrimination, and human rights abuses continued to shape our global landscape. Today, there is an observable trend towards the revitalization of fascistic ideology, nationalism, and prejudice across the globe. These circumstances are calling the attention of international scholars, educators, and peace workers to find a way to counteract these negative tendencies and share lessons learned from our collective past.
Our Story
In these intertwined realities surrounding violence and conflict resolution, Documenting Peace was initiated in 2022 by members of the Bosch Alumni Network to evaluate, discuss, and document diverse approaches to peacebuilding, while creating a database of knowledge that may be used to inspire peace globally. This program emerged from two previous projects, including the World War @ 75 Years Dialogue Series and World War 2 Peace research collaborative.
The World War II @75 Years: Sharing Memories, Examining Legacies, and Forging Peace series encouraged a global discussion on the memories and legacies of World War II from different angels and geographical perspectives. A total of four sessions were organized in 2020 covering different perspectives on the Second World War.
The World War 2 Peace research collaborative was launched in 2021 and subsequently gathered six international researchers, who were trained to document the history of local, regional, and global peace processes within their own countries. In fact, the mural featured on the front page of our website was created through researcher Sarah Kuvenguhwa’s Artivism and Culture Activities: A New Local Approach to Peacebuilding project in Zimbabwe!
To learn more about these initiatives, please visit our Projects and Activities pages (forthcoming).
Program Directors
Adis Hukanovic is a psychologist and peace activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina based in Germany. His work has a strong focus on Dealing with the Past in the Western Balkan Region. As author of several exhibitions, public activities and a publication Adis contributed to a greater sensitivity for approaches towards memory on mass atrocities as an important part of the dealing with the past process in post-conflict societies. Adis worked for local and international organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and is one of the founders of the Foundation for Building Culture of Memory in Prijedor. He cooperated with international organizations such as the International Commission for Missing Persons, International Delegation of the Red Cross, Forum Civil Peace Service, and Robert Bosch Foundation, while developing and implementing many activities and projects. His research interest in memory on missing persons, psychology of genocide, and culture of memory on mass atrocities. He was granted the Visegrad scholarship for conducting his research on the topic: “How can archives contribute to the dealing with the past process in post-conflict societies?”
Erica Fugger is an oral historian and peace educator based at Rutgers University in the United States. Her doctoral research in American Studies explores the radical solidarities enacted by transnational peace movements during the Vietnam-American War. Erica previously managed Columbia University’s Center for Oral History Archives and Oral History MA program, and served as an Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights. She also directed Washington College’s World War II public memory program, the National Home Front Project, which collaborated with diverse communities across the United States to document and preserve civilian experiences of the war. Bridging her academic work with applied practice, Erica serves as a co-director of Documenting Peace and a researcher for the Community Organizing Oral History Project.
Project Support
The Bosch Alumni Network brings together former and current fellows, grantees and employees of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and its partners, and supports them as agents of change in their communities. The network contributes to an open, just and sustainable world by convening diverse perspectives, enabling knowledge sharing and empowering members to take collective action. With a decentralized structure and clusters based on topic and region, the network connects members with common interests and different backgrounds from around 140 countries, to foster cross-sectoral exchange and international collaborations. The Bosch Alumni Network is a cooperation between Robert Bosch Stiftung and the International Alumni Center (iac Berlin).
The opinions featured on this website do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the Robert Bosch Stiftung, iac Berlin, or the project’s leadership team; they are the personal opinions of the contributors.