Institution and team
The Peace Academy Rhineland-Palatinate is a central academic institution of the RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU). It was created to build bridges between academic peace and conflict research, civil society practitioners in this field and the regional public. The Peace Academy is based at RPTU's Landau site, but has a mandate for the entire federal state and beyond - both in terms of its networking activities and the focus of its work.
The Peace Academy team consists of management, academic staff and student assistants. In addition, there are a number of "associates" - mostly former employees who are still associated with the Peace Academy in various ways. The academic background of the research assistants is diverse, but is mostly in the social sciences - especially peace and conflict research, (human) geography and political science. There are also representatives of psychology and philological subjects among the students.
The Peace Academy is supported in its work by an advisory board, the structure of which reflects the Peace Academy's bridging function between "academia" and civil society. There is also a Friends & Sponsors Association, which supports the work of the Peace Academy beyond the university framework.
Tasks
The Peace Academy is an academic institution and conducts basic research in the field of peace and conflict research. However, the Peace Academy differs from conventional academic institutions in that the combination of "research and transfer" plays a special role. This means that all research at the Peace Academy is always understood from the perspective of application or in the context of public debate.
One form of practical orientation is contributions to training and teaching. Training here means the implementation or support of further education measures, especially for multipliers from civil society and school education. In addition, Peace Academy staff are not obliged to teach academically, but they regularly contribute to teaching at the university on a voluntary basis, which serves to train future multipliers on the one hand and supports the integration of the Peace Academy into the university on the other.
In addition to "Research and Transfer" and "Training and Teaching", the third area of work of the Peace Academy can be summarized as debate and networking, for which thePeace Academy uses considerable resources. On the one hand, it maintains a presence on social media and runs an active blog with various formats and a highly regarded podcast. On the other hand, the Peace Academy organizes a whole series of public events at various locations in Rhineland-Palatinate or supports them as a co-organizer. The range of topics and formats of these events are deliberately extremely diverse. They reflect the research topics of the Peace Academy, but also go far beyond these on current occasions. In terms of event formats, the spectrum ranges from online events and panel discussions to low-threshold offers in pedestrian zones and artistic projects.
The history of the Peace Academy
Consideration of the establishment of a peace academy in Rhineland-Palatinate dates back to the state government's coalition agreement in 2011. This led to the founding of the "Peace Academy Rhineland-Palatinate" supporting association in November 2013, with fifteen personalities from various educational institutions and civil society initiatives involved. The Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament took up the idea of founding a peace academy again in January 2014 and called on the state government to support the work of the supporting association. In the 2014/15 state budget, financial resources were provided for the first time for the establishment of the Peace Academy.
In July 2014, the University of Koblenz-Landau awarded the association the status of a "special academic institution" in accordance with § 96 HochSchG RLP, so that the first hires could be made on September 1, 2014, Anti-War Day, and work could begin in the Frank-Loebsches Haus in Landau. In the presence of representatives from politics, business, academia and the media, the academy was officially opened at Hambach Castle on March 9, 2015.
The institutional and personnel consolidation process was completed in 2019: While safeguarding the Academy's character, the Peace Academy was fully integrated as a "Central Academic Institution" in accordance with. § 90 HochSchG RLP into the university. With the full integration into the university, the supporting association had fulfilled its actual task and changed its name to "Association of Friends and Sponsors of the Peace Academy" in 2019, while at the same time the accompanying advisory board for the Peace Academy was established. Since January 2023, the Peace Academy has been part of the newly merged RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau.