In the post-Cold War period, post-conflict justice and peacebuilding have become fundamental to conflict management. This period has witnessed conflict in the Balkans, West Africa, Central Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Today, many additional countries are becoming less stable due to a variety of complex reasons. Building lasting peace in areas of conflict can be challenging and requires supranational organisations such as the UN, the EU and various international non-governmental organizations to work towards sustainable peace.

This degree will familiarise you with the central theoretical, conceptual and empirical dimensions of post-conflict justice and peacebuilding and explores how these have changed over time. The degree focuses on the policies and mechanisms by which justice is claimed to assist in establishing sustainable peace and the relationship between peacebuilding and justice mechanisms. The programme allows you to critically reflect on these processes by considering the boundaries of peace, justice and reconciliation after conflict. You will also reflect on burdens of the past, problems of forgetting, issues surrounding legal, social and economic justice and the contemporary challenges to the practices of justice and peacebuilding such as evaluation and local owenership.

Students can obtain a PG Cert on satisfactory completion of modules to the value of 60 credit points, or a Diploma in Post-Conflict Justice and Peacebuilding should they exit with modules worth 120 credit points.

Students must pass the dissertation and four module courses to obtain an MSc. The MSc shall not be awarded if a candidate fails to achieve a dissertation mark of D3 or above.