Agnostic Memory and Peace: Colombia, Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine

A seminar with Professor Lisa Strömbom How can societies emerging from violent conflict engage with deeply contested pasts without erasing difference or forcing consensus? In this seminar, Lisa Strömbom, Associate Professor of Political Science at Lund University, Sweden, presents her latest book, Agonistic Memory and Peace: Colombia, Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine, which explores the transformative potential of memory work in some of the world's most enduring and emotionally charged conflicts. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research in Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Israel-Palestine, the book examines how local organizations create spaces where competing memories of violence, loss, and injustice can be expressed, challenged, and placed in dialogue with one another. Rather than viewing disagreement as an obstacle to peace, the book draws on agonistic peace theory to argue that sustained, non-violent contestation can become a productive force for conflict transformation. Through interview-based case studies and careful historical analyses of memory politics, Strömbom investigates how dialogue initiatives navigate polarized environments and resist pressures to simplify complex histories. The findings highlight the importance of safeguarding dialogue spaces, supporting counter-hegemonic voices, and fostering exchanges across different memory communities and scales. Read the book via Open Access here : Agonistic Memory and Peace: Colombia, Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine on JSTOR Professor Lisa Strömbom Professor Lisa Strömbom is a Senior lecturer and Associate professor in Political Science, specialized in Peace and conflict research at the Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Lund University. Her research centers on agonistic peace, conflict transformation, identity politics, recognition in intrastate conflict as well as on grassroots peacebuilding with a main empirical focus on Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is currently participating in two research projects. One concerns Swedish civil society and humanitarian aid to Palestine from 1967 to the present day, and the other concerns the development of agonistic diplomacy in relation to the UN and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In recent years, her research has focused on agonistic peace and peacebuilding at the local level in Colombia, Israel-Palestine, and Northern Ireland. She led the project “Pushing the boundaries of peace research – reconceptualizing and measuring agonistic peace”, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond 2019-2015. She has recently published the monograph Agonistic memory and peace. Colombia, Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine (Edinburgh University Press, 2026) and previously Israeli identity, thick recognition and conflict transformation (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), and coauthored the text-book War and Peace in Israel-Palestine (Krig och Fred i Israel/Palestina) with Professor Karin Aggestam and Ph D Anders Persson (Studentlitteratur, 2014). She co-edited the book Divided Cities - Governing Diversity with Professor Annika Björkdahl (Nordic Academic Press, 2015). She has published articles in journals such as European Journal of International Relations, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of International Relations and Development, European Journal of International Security, Global Society, Review of International Studies, Third World Quarterly, Space and Polity, Mediterranean Politics and Peacebuilding. In 2020 she was promoted to Excellent Teaching Practitioner (ETP) by the Faculty of Social Sciences. Dr Alice Panepinto Dr Alice Panepinto is an Institute Fellow and Reader in the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast. She is an international and comparative lawyer focusing on human rights and humanitarian law, and has a regional specialism in the Middle East and particularly Palestine. Her current teaching includes International Human Rights Law (LLM) (module coordinator), Human Rights in Practice (LLM) and Legal Skills and Methods (LLB - L1). Between 2020-24 she led, as PI, a project funded by AHRC (reference: AH/T007540/1) that seeks to better understand the humanitarian impact of continued forcible transfer of Palestinian Bedouin communities living in E1, Jerusalem, and how impunity for violations of international law contributes to the deterioration of humanitarian vulnerabilities. Among the key outputs, Alice was lead co-editor of the project book Ending Impunity for International Law Violations: Palestinian Bedouins and the Risk of Forced Displacement (Hart, 2025). Alice's monograph, Truth and Transitional Justice: Localising the International Legal Framework in Muslim Majority Legal Systems (Hart, 2022), investigates synergies between international law and Islamic law in furthering truth-seeking, the formation of collective memories and the victims’ right to know the truth, as key aims of the international paradigm of transitional justice and broadly supported by the shari’ah. The initial project was enhanced by a follow-on project also funded by the AHRC-FoF (reference: AH/W006782/1) in 2021-2024, which delivered a range of digital outputs produced in collaboration with a Palestinian media company. The leading output was a documentary film, We Will Remain, which has been included in the official selection of numerous film festivals across the globe.