MA Program in Peace and Conflict Management

Program description

The Faculty of Social Sciences is excited to offer a rigorous one-year international graduate program in Peace and Conflict Management. Viewed through both international and regional lenses, the field of conflict management will be explored in its many facets, with special attention paid to the wider Middle East conflict while conceptual, practical and comparative elements of conflict management of other global conflicts are examined.

As a deeply divided society and a country in a protracted conflict with other countries in the region, Israel is a unique environment for a program whose goal is to enable students to understand how conflicts unfold from the grassroots level and move up through the halls of government to the international community. Israel supplies excellent field study opportunities that allow students to see how attempts to manage conflicts and promote coexistence, mutual understanding, and peace processes actually develop and take root, and is a real-time hands-on working laboratory for advanced international and Israeli students, offering encounters with ongoing conflicts as well as successful and failed efforts to achieve peace.

What you will study

The interdisciplinary program of study includes courses in political science, international relations, psychology, sociology, communications, history, and regional studies. Included in the course of study are a number of field trips throughout Israel in order to gain close familiarity with certain aspects of the local conflict. There is also a practicum component in NGOs related to aspects of peace-making and conflict management; thoughtful simulations of decision-making processes, negotiations and conflict management; and guest lectures given by activists, practitioners, politicians, diplomats, academics and former military officials.

Over the course of three semesters, we will study sources, types, and levels of conflicts, where students will become familiar with tools to trace their development. The curriculum takes as its focus courses on conflict management and provides students with practical tools in the fostering of peace processes. Research methodology and field practicum are also included.

Testimonials

Alex Gorman, USA - Peace and Conflict Management- 2017-2018 Cohort:

"My degree is going to help me with my future plans because it is very interdisciplinary. It's going to help me to get exactly where I want to go, it's going to help me and challenge me to be a better professional in the academic world"

Uta Freyer, Germany - International MA in Peace & Conflict Management- 2013-2014 Cohort:

"The program was amazing and the year in Haifa was the best year of my life. The team at the International School managed to create the perfect class, around 20 classmates from all over the world, from all continents, warm, colourful, creative people, different academic backgrounds."

"In my studies at the University of Haifa I really pushed my academic level and that improved my self-confidence, also as a woman, to make an international career."