Authorship is a feature of career success and is relevant for practically all health science fields. Yet negotiating co-authorship is one of the most difficult processes academics encounter. The stakes are high, issues can be complex, and negotiators’ motivations are often multifaceted. The tools presented in this article – preparation, relationship development, and communication – can be used to increase the likelihood of a successful negotiation. Through the use of a case study, this article illustrates how a typical junior colleague can negotiate with their mentor. Additionally, this article outlines various standards of co-authorship to ensure that published authorship reflects appropriate standards of the field. The goal is for academics to be able to negotiate not only effectively, but also ethically.

The issue of apology and disclosure of medical errors in the context of the physician- patient relationship has attracted increasing attention in recent years. On the other hand, it has received little attention in the context of public health activities, thus missing the collective healing potential of apologizing and providing information to the public.
The purpose of this paper is to enrich the discussion regarding apologies and disclosure errors in the context of public health. To fulfil this purpose, the paper addresses the ringworm case, which is a well- known episode in the history of Israeli public health policy. More specifically, the paper focuses on a decision handed by the Israeli Supreme Court in the Eibi Case (2015), which recognized a duty to inform ringworm patients about the medical error involved in their treatment and its results. The paper seeks to examine whether this decision succeeded where other legal means failed, in the construction of a collective healing process. The paper concludes that although the Eibi Case provided the court an opportunity to contribute to the creation of a collective healing process of ringworms patients, the decision didn’t fully realize this potential.

The Israeli health system consists of approximately 200,000 employees in a variety of positions, such as: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, psychologies, physical therapists, lab workers, speech therapists, occupational therapists, dieticians, orderlies, administrators and housekeeping workers and many more. (Ministry of Health, 2016). The system has gone through long-lasting struggles, conflicts and crises initiated by power groups and various functional representations and unions. This article will focus on conflicts occurring between doctors, in their professional occupation, and the governmental ministries (Health and Treasury). In addition, it will examine the processes that encourage the occurrence of conflicts in the health system. Even though doctors do not represent the entire health system, it is important to emphasize that they are its beating heart. Their weight in the general health system is extremely high, much higher than their relative part therein.
In addition, this article will examine a struggle by doctors to shorten their long shift hours, by exposing the root causes and the reasons that led to the struggle’s demise, without the achievement of their declared goals. This article will suggest that tools appropriate for a true resolution of conflicts in the health system should be tailored and specific to the complexity of the system (as in a delicate surgery), as opposed to more general tools such as mediation, and certain “copy-paste” tools used for conflict resolution in other disciplines.

Recent decades have witnessed the appearance of multiple grounds for vaccine hesitancy. One of the options to deal with this phenomenon is legislative. Given that vaccination enforcement through law raises allegations of infringement of constitutional rights, interventions seeking to promote vaccination compliance should rather address the factors that influence vaccine hesitancy, which are – by and large – related to trust in health authorities. Trust in health authorities may be promoted by a procedure for compensating the comparatively few vaccination victims reflecting a willingness to acknowledge liability and commitment to social justice.
A qualitative study of the Israeli Vaccination Victim Insurance Law was conducted by the author. The study involved document content analysis (legislative protocols, Court judgments) and semi-structured in-depth interviews with informants representing different legal, medical and ethical perspectives. The thematic analysis found that the Israeli Vaccination Victim Insurance Law and its implementation in Court do not attain their therapeutic potential with respect to the promotion of trust. Barriers to claim submissions and the denial of all claims submitted according to the law do not permit the acknowledgement of liability or the demonstration of the authorities’ commitment to social justice.
Recognizing the therapeutic power of the Law may lead to adaptations or amendments promoting trust in the health authorities and subsequently fostering vaccine compliance.

This paper examines the intersection between the two professions – law and medicine – with reference to systematic transformations that have characterized their development in the past century. In particular, the paper examines the co-emergence of the new public health and health promotion scholarship along with the development of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) movement in the second half of the 20th century. The two movements, with their later developments, have aspired to change the focus of professionals in the field, and both have been tremendously successful on the one hand, and on the other have remained marginal to mainstream training and identity building of contemporary lawyers and doctors.

“Participation” has been defined as the engagement of local populations in the design and implementation of peace-building processes in post-conflict settings and it has been presumed to be critically important to sustainable conflict intervention. In this article, we explore this concept, so central to the field of conflict resolution, focusing on a set of problematic assumptions about power and social change that undergird it. As a remedy to these issues, we offer a narrative as a lens on the politics of participation. This lens thickens our description of our own participation as interveners, a reflexive move that is notably missing in most efforts to redress the dark side of “participation” – that it has often been used as a means to upend structural violence, only to contribute to its reproduction. Drawing on the work of Ginwright, specifically his work with black youth in Oakland, CA, we explore participation as a process involving the critical examination of master/counternarratives. By offering a narrative lens on participation, we hope to illuminate a framework for the ethics of conflict resolution practice that enables practitioners to ethically navigate the politics of “participation.”

As the nature of global violence shifts and conflict becomes increasingly characterized by intrastate violence, theoretical underpinnings of violence and aggression based on Westphalian models have become insufficient. Contemporary warfare is no longer confined to acts of violence between states using large-scale weaponry where non-combatants are rarely at the front lines. Instead, small arms have allowed rebel groups to bring the front lines of conflict to villages, resulting in a much deadlier age of violence against civilians. This shift has led to an increase in attention to the impact of violent conflict on civilians, including a consideration of the gendered experiences of women, men, girls and boys.
Of particular concern in this article is the way in which a discourse of victimhood, mobilized through international policy and intervention, can further marginalize and disempower women in postwar contexts. Drawing on ethnographic data from fieldwork with women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article will highlight the usefulness of a narrative framework for understanding how individuals make sense of violence, and the discursive politics at work in how these experiences are storied. To this end, the article endeavours to expand the theoretical base from which to understand women’s experiences of conflict in order to ensure postwar interventions do not confine women to the role of “victim,” but support a full range of their expression of agency.

The study of literature, although relatively new to the field of peace and conflict studies, has proven to be a valuable way to develop our understanding of violent social conflicts and the possible methods of resolving or transforming them. Literary texts present students of human conflict and conflict resolution with an appreciation of the power of “thick” descriptions of the human experience and the problems with “thin” modes of expression. Narrative and literary works reveal the indelible marks that violence and conflict inscribe on those left in their wake. Examining conflict through literature also grants students access to the ethical and moral dilemmas that people face as they navigate complex and oppressive social systems. A graduate-level course in “Conflict and Literature” taught for the past ten years at George Mason University provides evidence of these uses and suggests the possibility of further pedagogical developments.

While stories have circulated for millennia and constitute the very fabric of life in society, narrative as an optic for understanding and engaging with conflict emerged in the field of conflict resolution only in the past few decades, and has already amassed an array of significant contributions (Bar-Tal and Salomon, 2006; Cobb, 2013; Grigorian and Kaufman, 2007; Kellett, 2001; Lara, 2007; Nelson, 2001; Rotberg, 2006; Winslade and Monk, 2000). They encompass several spheres of action. Narrative analysis provides a means to locate individual and communal meaning in their discourse and to pinpoint conflicts in their world views that threaten their identity and agency. Further, it helps explain how marginalized people remain marginalized. Narrative interventions allow for conflict transformation, helping people to renegotiate their social positions and reclaim lost agency stemming from marginalized positions. Narrative evaluation highlights the flexibility of that model to measure change through a detection of discursive shifts over time. This article provides an overview of narrative approaches to conflict, answering: (a) What is narrative and what is its potential as a tool for understanding and responding to conflict? (b) How might we conduct a narrative analysis of a conflict? (c) From this analysis, how might we then construct narrative interventions and programme evaluations?

The overall purpose of a restorative conference is to address the conflict implied in the committing of an offence. The conference convenes a community of care around the offence and invites participants to take up responsibility for addressing the situation. Through a case study drawn from a role-played scenario, this article shows how a restorative conference process in a school might be performed, after an offence has taken place. A transcribed role play is used here to illustrate a narrative practice in the facilitation of restorative conferences. This practice has been written about before, but here, the dialogue is made prominent, while around the dialogue, a commentary aims to make clear the purposes behind what is said.

The application of peace research to settings of violent conflict requires careful attention to the ethical dimensions of scholarship; yet, discussions about the ethics of peace research remain underdeveloped. This article addresses a critical gap in the literature, outlining a framework for ethical peace research broadly encompassed in three guiding principles: responsibility, reciprocity and reflexivity. The first section provides an overview of the ethics of peace action and research, introducing key contributions that practitioner-scholars have made to the ethics of peacebuilding. In the second section, I explore how the guiding principles of reflexivity, responsibility and reciprocity offer a flexible framework for engaging in everyday ethical research practices. I conclude with preliminary recommendations to encourage further conversation about the ethics of peace research, offering ideas for future action.

Native studies is a field in the United States in which many scholars count themselves as activists both in scholarship and practice because their central focus is service to the American Indian community. This interdisciplinary field provides an interesting contrast to peace studies, a similarly interdisciplinary field that, while normatively committed to the study of peace, consists primarily of research that often does not similarly commit the researcher in service to conflict-engaged communities. This article utilizes first-person interviews and evaluates Native studies scholarship through the lens of activism as a potential model for practice-relevant scholarship in peace studies. The concept of scholarship itself as a peace practice is premised on the consideration of both teaching and publishing as forms of activism, here exemplified by Native studies scholars. When acts of scholarship themselves are considered activism and thus practice, the distinction between scholarship and practice is blurred, presenting a challenge to the binary categorizations that have allowed the academy to privilege the knowledge of scholars over that of practitioners. I argue that the experience of Native studies scholars may offer insight for the construction of a framework for peace studies that accounts for scholarship as activism, and in so doing, is better able to evaluate and include both scholarship and practice.

In less than two decades, security sector reform (SSR) has crystallized as an organizing framework guiding international engagement in countries affected by violent conflict. SSR is a normative proposition, grounded in democratic governance and human security, and a concrete set of practices. As such, it represents an exemplary case of the dialectic between scholarship and practice and an outstanding vantage point from which to interrogate this nexus. In this article, I explore the dynamic interplay between theory and practice in SSR. In particular, I show how the basic tenets of conflict transformation – present in the first generation of scholarship on SSR – were sidelined in SSR practices. Practical experiences led to strong critiques of the ‘conceptual-contextual’ divide and, eventually, to a second generation of critical scholarship on SSR that has begun to coalesce. I conclude by noting the parallels between recent scholarship on SSR and the insights captured in earlier work on conflict transformation.

The field of conflict engagement is riddled with tensions and challenges, such as the ‘science-practice crisis’ or the ‘scholarship–practice divide’. Using interviews and an inductive, interdisciplinary approach and following the framework of The Moral Imagination, this article aims to deconstruct this core tension of ‘scholarship or practice’. It does this from the perspective of individuals often overlooked in our field: artists. This study included interviews with three specific artists who work along the practice–scholarship spectrum. Even though these artists engage in both scholarship and practice, they do not simply define themselves as ‘scholars’ or ‘practitioners’. Instead, they navigate their identities and work in-between these two terms. While practicing, researching and teaching they exemplify – and also move beyond – the ‘both/and’ approach. Using an inquiry-based, inductive approach to glean insight from these artists gives them voice and opens up a space for their views on the relationship between scholarship and practice. Paying special attention to how artists make sense of their location(s) along the aforementioned spectrum unearths fresh perspectives on the debate while furthering our understanding of the nexus between scholarship and practice

In settings characterized by violent conflict, documentary filmmakers serve as a conduit between local experiences and the broader public. Highlighting these experiences requires filmmakers to immerse themselves in a context, digest scholarly findings, interview local sources and organize information into an accessible storyline. Those who utilize this craft often draw from established research or collaborate with scholars to ensure the narrative resonates with people and represents verified events. At the same time, their films contribute to the practice of peacebuilding through a participatory process that focuses on storytelling and community healing. This article explores the dual role of documentary filmmakers by positioning them as potential bridge-builders between practice and scholarship in peacebuilding. Specifically, it looks at the way filmmakers navigate between these realms by countering hegemonic narratives, introducing marginalized voices, contextualizing conflict and sharing stories with a wide audience – while also reflecting on the way their own identities and viewpoints influence this process.

This article illustrates liberation theology’s evolution and method and argues that its approach to bridging the gap between theory and practice serves as a complement and challenge for conceptualizing the dynamic and fluid relationship between scholarship and practice in peace studies. The 1971 publication of A Theology of Liberation made Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez one of the most influential scholars and theologians of the 20th century, but the process that led to this publication rests upon the day-to-day reflective practice of its author. Gutiérrez’ commitment to pastoral practice, especially among poor communities, raises questions about whose and what kind of knowledge is privileged in the academy, about the possibility of sustainably sourcing wisdom from local communities and about the necessity of scholars to locate themselves within the realities and among the communities they study. Given the affinity between liberation theology’s inductive method and the elicitive approach in some currents of peace studies, the article places its emphasis on the convergent contributions of Gustavo Gutiérrez and John Paul Lederach and draws information from personal conversations with both authors. As a whole, the article contributes to the bourgeoning and necessary dialogue between peace studies and theology.

This article demonstrates how international policy frameworks provide space for iterative engagement between peacebuilding scholars and practitioners. I focus on United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, which prioritized gender mainstreaming in all stages of peacebuilding. This analysis is based on a review of documents and literature that trace the trajectory of UNSCR 1325 from a variety of perspectives, and informal field interviews with practitioners working at the nexus of gender and peacebuilding. UNSCR 1325 was the product of practitioners who felt that gender was central to peace and security in practice and supported their views with theory. The process of drafting and implementing UNSCR 1325 simultaneously legitimized practitioner projects to incorporate women in peacebuilding and narrowed their scope, prompting critique and research from scholars and scholar-practitioners. The ensuing debates reveal how international policy frameworks can provide a space for iterative and productive discourse between scholars and practitioners by reaffirming shared normative objectives and making the contributions and limitations of both theory and practice visible. Scholar-practitioners can expand the frequency, quality and impact of interactions in this space by acting as intermediaries who circulate between and bridge the worlds of scholarship, policy and practice.