The Jackson School’s Peacebuilding Initiative hosted a discussion January 21 with Pamina Firchow, associate professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management and founding executive director of Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI). The event was co-hosted by the MacMillan Center’s Conflict, Resilience and Health Program.

Firchow explained EPI’s innovative approach to generating participatory statistics on everyday peace. In its work, EPI conducts research and evaluation in partnership with communities affected by conflict and connects diverse stakeholders working on peace and conflict issues to inform peacebuilding practice, policy, and scholarship.

EPI’s approach has formed the basis for the first pillar of the Peace Impact Framework, an initiative created by the international NGO Search for Common Ground. The concept of “everyday peace” has inspired cross-cultural research, including a 2024 study on everyday peace in Mauritania, conducted by Catherine Panter-Brick, Jackson School professor and director of the Peacebuilding Initiative, and Jackson Senior Fellow Bisa Williams.

“A critical part of peacebuilding is to understand what everyday peace means for different groups of people. What I vividly remember from fieldwork in Mauritania was that people emphasized the importance of everyday peace of mind whilst studying, socializing, working, and moving about the neighborhood,” said Panter-Brick. “The EPI approach is a grounded, useful methodology for communicating how people perceive educational and socioeconomic opportunities, social cohesion, and safety. It provides important measures for evaluating peacebuilding outcomes and for monitoring pathways to peace.”

Firchow also discussed EPI’s recent work in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as ongoing peacebuilding efforts in Colombia and Sri Lanka.

Established in 2024, the Peacebuilding Initiative works towards understanding pathways to peace and documenting how policy efforts can build a more lasting peace. The initiative offers peace-based courses at Yale, provides research opportunities for faculty and students, and hosts events throughout the academic year, including an annual spring colloquium.