Dear Peace Family,
As I write these lines to you spring has come to Innsbruck. A fresh wind is blowing. The sky is clear. The air is crisp, the sun of early May rising. Another online phase is well under way. A new cycle is beginning as the current students are preparing their assignments, commencing their journey through the semester. Reading the contributions to this second volume of the Many Peaces Magazine, it feels like breathing in the spirit carried by that fresh spring wind.
The texts speak of community and of emerging relational platforms. They relate stories about spaces held for each other like in the Alumni Sweat Lodge and the Consciousness Research Group. They report on common explorations of what it means to be a peace scholar and facilitator. The notions of the transrational and the elicitive are embodied here, enfleshed and painted with the colors of life, as is done in the contributions of Rosalie Kubny and Tomás Darío Pérez Vega. The magazine tells of projects completed and ready to be shown to the world, like the publication of Sophie Friedel’s Art of Living Sideways as newest Volume in the Masters of Peace. It brings news of theses completed and students turning into alumni, embarking on a new journey of their own. Congratulations to all recent graduates, like Layal Dorra, Mayme Lefurgey, Margrete Slettebø and Tanuja Thurairajah who are exemplarily featured here. From the program’s side I can report to you that there will be a large group of graduates receiving their diploma during the graduation ceremony this summer, maybe the largest one yet.
The fresh spring wind seems to have carried the seeds of Peace Studies far. Most recently to Brazil where a new Master Program in Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies is flowering, established by no less than an alumna of the program – Cerys Tramontini and her team. Once the wind brought some seeds from Castellón to Innsbruck, Egidio de Bustamante’s contribution to the current volume is a reminder of that. Now they are taking root in Brazil.
I am looking forward to that creative and novel space that will open up this August – when the hot summer wind blows through Innsbruck and fans the fires of inspiration during the Academic Festival of Many Peaces. The very fact that there now is a Many Peaces Magazine on its second volume finally highlights the vibrancy of this Peace Studies community and its flourishing.
All those new developments and initiatives show what is possible when dedication, effort and heart come together; at times with a little help from that serendipitous yet uncontrollable friend wind. Just like Franz Jenewein in the current volume, I still remember how Innsbruck Peace Studies began. I continue to be amazed by each present moment, am curious about what is still to come and remain grateful for this fresh wind and the transformations and new ideas it brings.
The people writing this magazine and those that feature in it – known faces all. Only a short time ago they were students. Now they are alumni, finding new ways of thinking and living peace and conflict. Adding their own touch, bringing in new ideas. Soon… who knows where the fresh wind will carry them and which fruits these seeds will still bear. But here and now the moment appears ripe. Promising. Full of opportunity. May we all use it, this Kairos, this grace of the current moment. May the fresh wind remain at our back. May the next steps be guided by the same spirit of adventure and innovation that carries this magazine and may we all continue to be enriched by it.
I hope you will enjoy the magazine!