The 2026 Notre Dame Student Peace Conference committee seeks submissions for this year’s conference, New Game, New Peaces: Strategies for a Shifting Field.
Submission Deadline: 11:59 pm on Monday, January 26, 2026
What does peacebuilding mean when the old rules are thrown out? How can we build lasting systems conducive to peace and justice on a terrain that is shifting below our very feet? What can we still save from our traditional models, and what vitality can novel approaches add?
We currently find ourselves in the midst of the most profound global paradigm shifts since the end of the Cold War. Changes in international relations are dissolving well-established norms and upending the dominant rules-based international order, rendering it ineffectual and archaic.
Authoritarian states gain stature and prestige, while democracies stretch themselves to their limits. In lieu of peace, states push for dehumanizing forms of “security,” violating dignity, privacy, and freedoms. Power is exercised not through universal standards of human rights, but by tiered systems of value in which individuals and communities on the margins are rendered disposable.
Isolation, fragmentation, and distrust are the order of the day, with division along ethnic, religious, gendered, and national lines trumping coexistence, harmony, and solidarity. Online media spaces and technologies promise radical and horizontal connectivity but instead silo us into camps hostile to communication. A world that has been globalized is now becoming sectarianized.
How are those of us interested in building peace to respond to this shifting state of the world at the local, national, and international levels?
Traditional methods are now outmoded, suppressed, ignored, or insufficient for the real, unprecedented challenges facing us. We need creativity, innovation, and adaptivity more than ever before, so this conference seeks to explore new and groundbreaking approaches to peacebuilding that respond to the shifts in social and global relations.
As the reductive “victor’s peace,” might-makes-right model of conflict resolution becomes increasingly normalized, what fresh perspectives challenge and complicate these tendencies? How can we introduce more nuanced and holistic forms of peace?
We invite undergraduate and graduate students from all fields of study and practice to propose presentations that analyze these changing “rules of the game” or discuss innovative solutions and vocabularies for building new norms of peace and justice. Strong proposals might engage with, but are not limited to, topics such as:
Thematic Areas and Frameworks of Focus
| • Multipolarity | • International Institutions | • Grassroots Activism |
| • Human Rights | • Environmentalism | • Tech and Social Media |
| • Economic Development | • Literature and the Arts | • Religious Peacebuilding |
| • Nonviolent Resistance | • Criminal Justice | • Normative Theorizing |
| • Reconciliation | • Moral Imagination | • Global Health Inequality |
| • Women’s Participation | • Social Entrepreneurship | • Mediation / Negotiation |
| • Decolonizing Peace | • Xenophobic Populism | • Conflict Transformation |
Ongoing Conflicts – Regional and International
| • Palestine-Israel Conflict | • War in Ukraine | • Sudanese Civil War |
| • Conflicts in the D.R.C. | • Violence in the Sahel | • Gen Z Revolutions |
| • Civil War in Myanmar | • Ethiopian Civil Conflict | • China-Taiwan Relations |
| • Nuclear Arms Expansion | • U.S. Deportation Activity | • Kashmir Conflict |
| • Far-Right Gains in Europe | • Mexican Drug Wars | • Escalation in the Caribbean |
| • South China Sea Disputes | • Pakistani Insurgencies | • Russia Drone Expansion |
| • Collapse of Free Trade | • Haitian Political Crisis | • Post-Regime Syria |
Students may select up to two preferred presentation formats from a variety of accepted options. Proposed presentations may be based on original research, experiential learning, peace work and practice, and/or theoretical analysis.
Students should carefully review all submission guidelines and the descriptions of each accepted format while preparing their proposals.
Submit Now: 2026 Submission Form