Greetings, PJSA, from your Co-Chairs!
We hope this issue of The Chronicle finds everyone safe and off to a wonderful 2021!
As always, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on with PJSA’s Board and we would like your input. The Board is considering which of our two journals (The Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Practice and Resistance Studies Journal) we would like to continue offering, or perhaps whether members would continue to enjoy both. Please feel free to send any thoughts to Publications Chair Matthew Johnson (mwjohnson19@gmail.com). Thanks to the leadership of The Chronicle Editor in Chief Wim Laven, Board members are co-editing forthcoming issues of the magazine and we hope you like it!
We want to thank everyone for their patience with the listserv migration. We know this is a very valuable tool but it needed some adjustments. Special thanks to Board Member Dean Johnson for his hard work on that project. Additionally, we are pleased that our membership grew in fall 2020! Thanks to Dean and to Jeremy Rinker, and always to our tireless Executive Director Michael Loadenthal, for their membership outreach. You can reach them at djohnson4@wcupa.edu, jarinker@uncg.edu and michael@peacejusticestudies.org, respectively.
As we noted in our end of year message, the Board is quite pleased with the turnout for the fall 2020 virtual conference. In particular, we wanted to thank all those who encouraged or required students to participate. Planning for the fall 2021 conference is well under way and we look forward to sharing more about that as details become clearer. It will definitely include virtual participation options for those unable or uncomfortable traveling. We are also looking forward to hosting more collaborative events with partners. Any suggested collaborations are welcome! You can always contact us at lfinley@barry.edu and jbarron@selkirk.ca.
The Board is happy to report that it awarded its first mini grants! They have been awarded to Alexander Dunlap for his project Translating the Extractive Nature of Energy Transition, and Vanessa Meng and the Energy Justice Network for the project, Little Dragons for a Better World, to facilitate workshops that fight environmental and institutional racism. Details about this work we helped to fund will be shared at the conclusion of the projects. We encourage members engaged in activist projects to check out the simple application to support your work. Thanks to Niki Johnson for spearheading that program.
While these remain challenging times due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to racial, political and other divisions, we remain optimistic that things are moving in a better direction and that our work as peace and conflict resolution scholars, activists and educators is more essential than ever.
In Peace;
Laura Finley and Jennie Barron, Co-Chairs