Staff profile

Stefanie Kappler joined Durham University in 2015. She holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews. Stefanie previously acted as Director of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Centre for War and Peace Studies (Liverpool Hope University). She is particularly interested in the contested and transformative nature of local imaginations of peace and has conducted fieldwork in Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Cyprus, Brussels, Northern Ireland, Kosovo and the Basque Country.

Her research interests include critical approaches to peacebuilding, specifially with respect to the Balkans, South Africa and Cyprus as well as the role of memory and art in peacebuilding. 

Her research is driven by an interest in what constitutes agency and how we can come to an understanding of peacebuilding agents that avoids their (colonial) essentialisation and takes account of their multidimensional character. To engage with this question, Stefanie has investigated the role that artists can play in peacebuilding processes to break through established categories and provide narratives that challenge dominant discourses.

Stefanie is working on externally-funded projects to investigate the connection between memory politics, cultural heritage and peacebuilding (see http://peaceandmemory.net/), the role of the arts in peace formation processes (https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/the-art-of-peace/home/about/) and decolonising peace education (https://www.dur.ac.uk/sgia/about/news/?itemno=41641). 

• Peacebuilding
• the European Union and Peacebuilding
• Spaces and places of peace and conflict
• Research Methods in Peace Studies
• Peace and the Arts
• Memory and Conflict
• Narrative Approaches
• Bosnia-Herzegovina
• South Africa
• Cyprus
• Northern Ireland

• Contextualising Conflict

• Contribution to panel "The EU and liberal peacebuilding" at the Annual Conference "Liberal Internationalism and European Security", 19 and 20 October 2015, Amsterdam.
• Peace and Memory research projects

Available for media contact about:

• Conflict and resolution:
• Europe: Politics, institutions & law:
• Identity, ethnicity and culture:
• International politics:

Authored book

• Björkdahl, Annika & Kappler, Stefanie (2017). Peacebuilding and Spatial Transformation: Peace, Space and Place. Routledge.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2014). Local Agency and Peacebuilding. EU and International Engagement in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus and South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan.

Book review

• Kappler, Stefanie (2020). Cities at War: Global Insecurity and Urban Resistance. Global Policy
• Kappler, Stefanie (2018). Film review:" A Snake Gives Birth to a Snake". Michael Lessac (dir). New York, USA: Saboteur Media, 2014. Cooperation and Conflict 53(4): 545-548.

Chapter in book

• Kappler, Stefanie & McKane, Antoinette (2022). Negotiating binaries in curatorial practice: modality, temporality, and materiality in Cape Town's community-led urban history museums. In Contested Urban Spaces. Monuments, Traces, and Decentered Memories. Capdepon, Ulrike & Dornhof, Sarah Palgrave Macmillan. 65-82.
• Björkdahl, Annika & Kappler, Stefanie (2021). Spaces of Peace. In The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation. Richmond, Oliver P. & Visoka, Gëzim Oxford: Oxford University Press. 139-151.
• Kappler, Stefanie & Lemay-Hebert, Nicolas (2021). From Power-Blind Binaries to the Intersectionality of Peace: Connecting Feminism and Critical Peace and Conflict Studies. In Feminist Interventions in Critical Peace and Conflict Studies. McLeod, Laura & O'Reilly, Maria London: Routledge.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2021). Privilege. In The Companion to Peace and Conflict Fieldwork. Mac Ginty, Roger, Brett, Roddy & Vogel, Birte Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. 421-432.
• Björkdahl, Annika & Kappler, Stefanie (2020). Peacebuilding and Spatial Transformation. In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies. Richmond, Oliver & Visoka, Gezim Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2020). Peacebuilding as a Self-Legitimising System: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Local Legitimacy and International Peacebuilding. Richmond, Oliver & Mac Ginty, Roger Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Björkdahl, Annika & Kappler, Stefanie (2019). The Spatial Dimensions of State-Building. In Handbook of Intervention and Statebuilding. Lemay-Hebert, Nicolas Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. 21-219.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2017). The Securitization of International Peacebuilding. In Securitization in Statebuilding and Intervention. Bonacker, Thorsten, Distler, Werner & Ketzmerick, Maria Baden-Baden: Nomos. 1.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2017). Positive Peace. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior. Moghaddam, Fathali M. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications. 640-641.
• Belloni, Roberto, Kappler, Stefanie & Ramovic, Jasmin (2016). Bosnia-Herzegovina: Domestic Agency and the Inadequacy of the Liberal Peace. In Post-Liberal Peace Transitions. Between Peace Formation and State Formation. Richmond, Oliver & Pogodda, Sandra Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 47-64.
• Kappler, Stefanie & Lemay-Hébert, Nicolas (2015). Hybrid local ownership in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo: From discursive to material aspects of ownership. In Local Ownership in International Peacebuilding: Key Theoretical and Practical Issues. Lee, Sung Yong & Özerdem, Alpaslan Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 74-92.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2015). Retelling the City: Competing Spaces of Social Engagement in Cape Town. In Divided cities: governing diversity. Björkdahl, Annika & Strömbom, Lisa Lund: Nordic Academic Press. 131-150.
• Forde, Susan & Kappler, Stefanie (2014). Connecting the Local and the Global - Understanding International Relations through Global Networks. In International Relations and Diplomacy for the Curious: Why Study International Relations and Diplomacy. Vaidya, Kishor Franklin: Curious Academic Publishing.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2014). Everyday Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Spaces: The Creation of Social Legitimacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Cultural Arenas. In Liberal Peacebuilding and the Locus of Legitimacy. Roberts, David Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 11-38.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2012). Liberal Peacebuilding’s Representation of the Local: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Hybrid Forms of Peace: From Everyday Agency to Post-Liberalism. Richmond, Oliver & Mitchell, Audra Palgrave.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2012). Representations of Peace in the EU Peacebuilding Approach in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Rethinking Peacebuilding The Quest for Just Peace in the Middle East and the Western Balkans. Aggestam, Karin & Bjorkdahl, Annika Routledge.

Edited book

• Chabot, Joceline, Godin, Richard, Kappler, Stefanie & Kasparian, Sylvia (2015). Mass media and the Genocide of the Armenians: One Hundred Years of Uncertain Representation. Palgrave.

Journal Article

• Cole, Lydia C. & Kappler, Stefanie (2022). Soundscapes of Mostar: Space and art beyond the divided city. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 16(5): 641-658.
• Bakonyi, Jutta, Kappler, Stefanie, Nag, Eva-Maria & Opfermann, Lena S. (2021). Precarity, Mobility and the City: Introduction to the Special Issue. Global Policy 12(S2): 5-9.
• Forde, Susan, Kappler, Stefanie & Björkdahl, Annika (2021). Peacebuilding, Structural Violence & Spatial Reparations in Post-Colonial South Africa. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 15(3): 327-346.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2021). Curating (im)mobility: Peri-urban agency in the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum. Global Policy 12(S2): 53-62.
• Kappler, Stefanie & McKane, Antoinette (2019). ‘Post-Conflict Curating’ the Arts and Politics of Belfast’s Peace Walls. De Arte 54(2): 4-21.
• Björkdahl, Annika & Kappler, Stefanie (2019). The creation of transnational memory spaces: professionalization and commercialization. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 32(4): 383-401.
• Kappler, Stefanie & Lemay-Hébert, Nicolas (2019). From Power-Blind Binaries to the Intersectionality of Peace: Connecting Feminism and Critical Peace and Conflict Studies. Peacebuilding 7(2): 160-177.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2018). The Legitimisation of Post-Conflict Intervention: Narrative Frames of Backwardness and Progress. Political Geography 66: 130-138.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2017). Sarajevo’s Ambivalent Memoryscape: Spatial stories of peace and conflict. Memory Studies 10(2): 130-143.
• Lemay-Hébert, Nicolas & Kappler, Stefanie (2016). What Attachment to Peace? Exploring the Normative and Material Dimensions of Local Ownership in Peacebuilding. Review of International Studies 42(5): 895-914.
• Tellidis, Ioannis & Kappler, Stefanie (2016). Information and communication technologies in peacebuilding: Implications, opportunities and challenges. Cooperation and Conflict 51(1): 75-93.
• Richmond, Oliver, Kappler, Stefanie & Björkdahl, Annika (2015). The ‘Field’ in the Age of Intervention: Power, Legitimacy, and Authority Versus the ‘Local’. Millennium - Journal of International Studies 44(1): 23-44.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2015). The dynamic local: delocalisation and (re-)localisation in the search for peacebuilding identity. Third World Quarterly 36(5): 875-889.
• Vogel, Birte, Richmond, Oliver P., Mac Ginty, Roger, Tellidis, Ioannis & Kappler, Stefanie (2014). Peacebuilding. Peace Review 26(4): 517-519.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2013). Peacebuilding and lines of friction between imagined communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and South Africa. Peacebuilding 1(3): 349-364.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2013). Coping with research: local tactics of resistance against (mis-)representation in academia. Peacebuilding 1(1): 125-140.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2013). Everyday Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Spaces: The Creation of Social Legitimacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina's Cultural Arenas. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 7(1): 11-28.
• Kappler, Stefanie (2012). Divergent Transformation and Centrifugal Peacebuilding: The EU in Bosnia and Herzegovina. International Peacekeeping 19(5): 612-627.
• Richmond, Oliver, Björkdahl, Annika & Kappler, Stefanie (2011). The emerging EU peacebuilding framework: confirming or transcending liberal peacebuilding? Cambridge Review of International Affairs 24(3): 449-469.
• Kappler, Stefanie & Richmond, Oliver (2011). Peacebuilding and culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Resistance or emancipation? Security Dialogue 42(3): 261.

Newspaper/Magazine Article

• Kappler, Stefanie & Monroy-Santander, Louis (2018). Colombia's troubled peace process and the lessons of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Conversation

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Kappler, Stefanie & Mannergren Selimovic, Johanna (2021). Working with the cultural heritage of conflict for peacebuilding: Lessons learned from the Western Balkans.