Professor Rachel Julian

Professor Leeds Beckett University

  • Leeds West Yorkshire

Professor Rachel Julian is an internationally recognised researcher working on Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping/Protection.

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Leeds Beckett

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Biography

Professor Rachel Julian is an internationally recognised researcher working on Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping/Protection and the way we recognise the lives and voices of those affected by violence and crisis. Her work challenges the widespread acceptance of violence in International Relations and the assumption that peacekeeping requires soldiers.

In working with community partners in South East Asia and East Africa, Rachel has explored how civilians protect one another from violence, increase their capacity and agency to act, the voices of survivors in influencing policy and how a nonviolent feminist analysis generates creative approaches in the midst of complex challenges.

Rachel's interdisciplinary research uses arts, creative and technology methods and is widely published and funded through research grants from AHRC-UKRI, Global Challenges Research Fund, British Academy and United States Institute for Peace. She is working in three international networks and regularly presents her research at international conferences. She has been invited as an expert to speak at a UN meeting and German Parliament sub committee and is always interested in new and exciting projects and methods.

Rachel teaches undergraduate and postgraduate in nonviolent resistance, civilian protection and developing and managing projects. She supervises PhD students researching peace, nonviolence, conflict and protection.

Industry Expertise

Research
Education/Learning

Areas of Expertise

Security
Peace
Feminism
Community
Culture
Governance
Politics

Education

Leeds Beckett University

Ph.D.

Project Management in the non-profit sector

2012

Leeds Metropolitan University

Certificate

Project Management

2006

University of Leeds

B.A.

Geography with Qualified Teacher Status

1993

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Languages

  • English

Media Appearances

Why unarmed civilian protection is the best path to sustainable peace

Waging Nonviolence  online

2018-07-06

“Unarmed civilian protection challenges the widespread assumption that ‘where there is violence we need soldiers,’ or that armed actors will only yield to violent threat,” said Rachel Julian, director of the Centre for Applied Social Research at Leeds-Beckett University, during a UN event in May. Hosted by the permanent missions of Uruguay and Australia to the UN, the event offered inspiring success stories and provided persuasive evidence that unarmed civilian protection works.

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Highlighting A Fellow Advocate And NP Supporter, Dr. Rachel Julian

Nonviolent Peaceforce  online

2018-05-07

As a teenager, Dr. Rachel Julian campaigned for nuclear disarmament. Now, she is Senior Lecturer in peace studies at Leeds Beckett University in England and on the board of Nonviolent Peaceforce. Like you, she advocates for Unarmed Civilian Protection.

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Event Appearances

Civilian Peacekeeping Today

Gandhi Symposium  Linz, Austria

2019-09-26

Competition or collaboration: how stakeholder expectations influence the results demonstrated in areas affected by violent conflict

Building an evidence base for humanitarian action: methodologies and approaches for the collection and analysis of information and evidence in humanitarian action  New York/Online

Who Built the Peace? Comparing evaluation methods in peacebuilding and conflict transformation

Conflict Research Society Annual Conference  Coventry

Articles

Drawing Out Experiential Conflict Knowledge in Myanmar: Arts-Based Methods in Qualitative Research With Conflict-Affected Communities

Journal of Peacebuilding & Development

2021

This article argues that arts-based methods such as drawing are particularly useful as means to explore experiential insights into how violent conflict impacts individuals and communities in specific sociocultural contexts and shapes their views of development and peace. It illustrates this through the discussion of a drawing workshop with members of violence-affected communities in Kachin state, Myanmar.

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Researching with ‘Local’ Associates: Power, Trust and Data in an Interpretive Project on Communities’ Conflict Knowledge in Myanmar

Civil Wars

2020

This article discusses benefits and challenges of qualitative-interpretive research conducted in teams of outside (Northern) researchers and national (Southern) associates, in which the latter have considerable autonomy over research design and data generation.

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From expert to experiential knowledge: exploring the inclusion of local experiences in understanding violence in conflict

Peacebuilding

2019

Critical peace and conflict scholars argue that to understand fully conflict dynamics and possibilities for peace research should incorporate ‘the local’. Yet this important conceptual shift is bound by western concepts, while empirical explorations of ‘the local’ privilege outside experts over mechanisms for inclusion.

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