We are pleased to welcome Dr. Sara Cobb, Drucie French Cumbie Chair at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, to deliver this year’s keynote!

Each year the conference schedule includes at least one keynote talk delivered by a special invited guest. Past speakers have included young activists, well-known scholar-practitioners, college and university professors, and representatives of civil society organizations.

We are thrilled that Dr. Cobb has agreed to join us for the conference, and we look forward to her talk on Friday afternoon. Read more about her interests and background below.

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Dr. Sara Cobb has a Ph.D. in Communication from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the Drucie French Cumbie Chair at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, where she was the dean/director from 2001 to 2009. In her current role as a faculty member, she teaches and conducts research on the relationship between narrative and conflict.

Dr. Cobb has written extensively on narrative dynamics of conflict, providing the theoretical basis for a narrative lens on both conflict analysis and conflict intervention; this perspective presumes that conflict is a struggle over meaning, anchored in and by the stories we tell. Currently her research is focused on the development of a conflict early warning system in the Arctic, derived from stakeholders’ risk narratives as well as policy documents of Arctic Council members. Her goal is to support conflict prevention in the High North in the context of rapidly changing climate.

Dr. Cobb sits on the advisory council of the Institute for Sustainable Earth at George Mason University, promoting interdisciplinary research on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and is also on the leadership council of the Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities. She was formerly the executive director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and is a leader in the fields of negotiation and conflict resolution studies.