Area
Peace engineering & conflict
Peace engineering, as I practice it, means bringing systems-thinking methods to reform and conflict problems — conflict-systems analysis, peacebuilding program design, training in fragile settings — and doing it with in-country partners rather than delivering a model at them. The point is not to hand over a diagram; it's to build a shared understanding of how a system holds together, so the people who live inside it can act on it. This area of my work has run mostly through the United States Institute of Peace and grows out of my systems-modeling research.
Evidence
The work here
The anchor engagement is a multi-year judicial-reform project in Burkina Faso, with a related public write-up from the United States Institute of Peace.
Method
The method here
What this area draws on: systems thinking and system-dynamics modeling to represent how a reform system behaves; participatory design, so the model is built with the people inside the system rather than imposed on them; and a habit of naming assumptions out loud, because in conflict settings the assumptions are usually where the disagreement lives. I try to show uncertainty honestly — a systems model is a way to reason, not a forecast to be trusted blindly.
Where this area leads
If you're an institute, foundation, or mission-driven organization working on reform or conflict, the foundations lane is the direct route. Tell me the context and who your in-country partners are.