The dissertation is a largely self-directed piece of work that enables a student to explore an issue or theme in depth, building on the skills developed in other modules and the expertise gained through field practices. The dissertation or practice-based final work needs to be embedded in practice or addressing practice-based issues, preferably based on field research. Action-research and work-based research are strongly encouraged.

The module presents an account of the history of electoral policy and practice; an overview of the policy elements which comprise an electoral process and their relationships; and an analytical framework for the development of skills in electoral policymaking, administration, and evaluation.

The dissertation is a largely self-directed piece of work that enables a student to explore an issue or theme in depth, building on the skills developed in other modules and the expertise gained through field practices. The dissertation or practice-based final work needs to be embedded in practice or addressing practice-based issues, preferably based on field research. Action-research and work-based research are strongly encouraged.

This module provides information necessary for electoral practitioners and administrators on procedures of modern direct democracy available in a growing number of jurisdictions worldwide. Two types of broad procedures are addressed: those initiated by citizens themselves, like citizens’ initiatives and popular referendums, and and those initiated by governments as mandatory referendums and non-mandatory plebiscites.

In contrast to the previous modules that focus on substantive issues related to the electoral process, this module addresses the ways in which election practitioners might apply this knowledge in real world situations in order to improve the electoral process in their own or other countries around the world. Specifically, the module provides an overview of how practitioners may develop strategies to effect change in the electoral process for the benefit of voters and in support of democratic rights.

This module provides students with an overview on the history and evolution of international and domestic election observation, the rationales for undertaking different types of monitoring efforts, and the varying operational approaches that are being used by practitioners in the field. At the same time, the module touches upon the evaluation criteria that can be used to render informed judgment on the quality of an electoral process.

This module provides students with the knowledge and skills required to examine the models of electoral justice systems, alternative electoral dispute resolution mechanisms and adjudication procedures in order to be able to design, manage and monitor these systems. This course offers a comprehensive overview of formal and informal mechanisms for resolving electoral disputes, as well as policies and practices of preventing them.

Through case studies and examples, the module provides participants with an overview of the nature of electoral conflict and the vulnerabilities which can trigger such conflict; the analytical skills and frameworks to profile incidents of electoral conflict; and the tools and best practices to prevent, manage, or mediate electoral conflict.

This module aims to identify the vulnerabilities and types of electoral malpractice and mispractice, and to introduce techniques and mechanisms that can prevent or manage such practices. More specifically, the module provides an overview of the typologies of electoral malpractice, the tactics used by perpetrators and investigation techniques used by enforcement stakeholders to prevent (or reveal and halt) electoral malpractice.

The module is designed to provide participants with the knowledge and skills required to develop, manage, and monitor media regulations, media relations and rumour control. To do so, the module reviews media-engagement strategies; media relationships and communications techniques; traditional and new media, and their role at all stages of the electoral cycle; media monitoring mechanisms; and future challenges and opportunities.

The module is designed to provide students with an overview of guiding principles for civic and voter education, and an understanding of the educational mandate as well as legislative frameworks. On the basis of detailed context assessment, it focuses on the evaluation of educational and voter needs, message development as well as potential education programme preparation and implementation.

This module combines both a conceptual and practical approaches to understanding election technology applications and the impact and challenges of managing these technologies in different political environments. More specifically, the module focuses on the conceptual frameworks that allow to define election technologies, identify stakeholders, and compare types of applications, and formulate the criteria that guide the assessment, selection and implementation of election technologies.

The module aims at providing students with: an overview on the sources and types of political marginalization that occur during elections; an explanation of the importance of marginalized electorates, special voting programmes and inclusive electoral environments; and an account of the most relevant principles for designing and implementing administrative and political mechanisms that can inform, enfranchise and empower these otherwise marginalized electorates.

This module provides an overview of substantive principles and the most fundamental technical issues, related to planning and implementing electoral operations. It systematically explores the options for the major activities that an electoral management body (EMB) must undertake at election time, and approaches to pursuing them effectively. In doing so, the module takes a substantial operational focus, emphasising the interconnectedness of the various areas of electoral management body (EMB) activity.

This module provides the exploration of the conceptual, legal, and administrative aspects of, and models for, voter registration and identifications systems in election administration. Twelve lessons help students to obtain the necessary skills to design, manage, and monitor voter identification/registration systems, and prevent and solve potential problems related to voter registers.

This module explores integrated electoral planning and budgeting and presents methodologies to enhance the democratic quality and technical efficiency of electoral administration through effective planning initiatives. More specifically, the module systematically explores the major factors that influence and structure the process of planning and budgeting for (and financing of) elections.

This module focuses on the nomination and campaign stages, and gives particular attention to the rules governing political parties and candidates throughout the whole electoral process. More specifically, the module provides an overview of political party system features and options, and the impact of political party systems (and methods of financing them) on electoral campaigning and administration.

The module focuses on an overview of the concept of boundary delimitation, including the potential for political controversy and past abuses; a discussion of the analytical techniques that can detect, or measure the impact of, manipulation; and an analysis of the mechanisms that can enhance the credibility and legitimacy of delimitation and prevent potential abuse.

Building on both an extensive literature and on the practical experience of EMBs around the world, the module focuses on an explanation of the importance of electoral systems in translating the democratic right to vote into practice; an overview on the main types of electoral systems; and an account of the most relevant approaches to the analysis and the key policy issues behind the design of these systems.

This module focuses on Electoral Management Bodies’ (EMBs) structure and organisation as well as how they can protect their autonomy, exercise management control, safeguard integrity, maintain transparency, ensure efficacy, and professionally implement rules and procedures while keeping the system voter friendly.

The module presents the sources and contents of the international legal framework, including regional obligations and commitments, to pave the way for subsequent courses that draw on comparative national practices. Moreover, the module profiles stakeholders of electoral legal frameworks, explores their interests, and illustrates how these interests impact the contents of legal frameworks and their implementation.

The module presents an account of the history of electoral policy and practice; an overview of the policy elements which comprise an electoral process and their relationships; and an analytical framework for the development of skills in electoral policymaking, administration, and evaluation.

This module covers ways to repair the state, cities and public infrastructure after conflicts, and to preserve natural resources during and after wars. It also touches upon the actors involved in such processes and how they are financed. Numerous case studies like the Soviet Union, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan are examined among else.

Migration has become a major political, economic and security subject in the past 20 years, particularly in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States. This module explores migration as the result of conflicts, humanitarian and economic crises.

The media and in particular the new digital media influence significantly the opinion of countries and people internationally. How to deal with media in the age of fake news, tweets, and actors who deliberately twist the news? What is the status of and what to think about the news coming from journalists “embedded” in conflict zones?

Democratic systems have historically proven to be good protections against internal or external conflicts. Representative democracy, multi-party system, free elections – all are assets allowing for less recourse to violence. Is it still the case in the contemporary world since the emergence of new players on the international arena?

Since the 1960s, the phenomenon of decolonization has been accompanied by numerous violent conflicts with the 2000s having seen the explosion of violence, especially on religious grounds. The module covers this historical overview as well as the areas of current tensions and the ways to prevent latent and future conflicts.

Access to drinking water, oil, natural and agricultural resources has become sources of tensions between states or components of the same state. The module is devoted to studying these phenomena that can be found on all continents.

The module addresses the following questions: Who are the historical players in conflict negotiation? Have there been any new players in the past 20 years? Is the UN in crisis? What role for NGOs?

This module is designed to offer the opportunity for in-depth evaluation and analysis of specific or cutting-edge topics not offered in detail in the taught curriculum.

This module will facilitate the legal literacy of learners to understand the concepts and principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and its relation with humanitarian action and peacebuilding.

This module aims to investigate how local actors can bridge the gaps between humanitarian, peacebuilding and development initiatives and focus the importance of the localisation and local turn agenda to shape new standards, sustainability and the humanitarian architecture.

This module aims to explore, through a culturally sensitive lens, the impact of mental health and psychosocial problems on the wellbeing of humanitarian and peacebuilding practitioners as well as on the affected populations.

This module explores the experience of refugees and other forced migrants displaced by conflict. It examines the causes of contemporary forced migration in order to understand the nature of migration flows and the corresponding humanitarian response.

The dissertation is a self-directed piece of work that enables students to explore an issue or theme in depth building on the skills developed in other modules and the expertise gained through field practices.

This module aims to advance knowledge and understanding of research ethics, theory and practice and describes methods available when doing research in conflict and post conflict settings on a chosen subject area.

The module specifically looks at the role of different actors, involved at different levels and in different capacities in post-conflict stabilisation and recovery processes.

This module reviews the critical issues related to the protection of civilians in conflict and post-conflict contexts by exploring different conceptual and operational frameworks.

This module will allow you to critically examine some of the personal skills (or ‘soft skills’) needed by professionals working in humanitarian action and peacebuilding.

This module aims to provide an understanding of how to analyse the city and its physical, social, economic, political, cultural and symbolic spaces that play a relief role during a conflict, for urban-based forced migration and for peacebuilding.

This module allows you to understand and deal with core issues related to culture, communication, trust building and culture-sensitivity.

This module equips you with a sound understanding of the complexity of conflicts, including of conceptual frameworks and theoretical debates related to humanitarian action and peacebuilding in complex environments.

To complete the Master’s Programme, students are required to write the Master Final Project on a relevant topic of interest. For their dissertation, a personal supervisor will be appointed to mentor the students. The Master in Conflict, Peace and Security is subsequently awarded upon the completion of 60 ECTS.

The end of the Cold War gave way to the emergence of new geostrategic realities with the proliferation of crises and conflicts, often related to ethnic or religious differences. In this international context, crisis management has become an indispensable political and military requirement. This course addresses the ways to identify, describe and critically assess some of the key current debates in the field of crisis management and related challenges facing the world today.

This course explores methods and challenges in the evaluation of peacebuilding and conflict resolution programmes. It provides an evaluation framework as well as practical suggestions for data collection and analysis, as well as the dissemination of findings.

This course introduces students to the concept of conflict transformation and how it differs from conflict resolution, management, and prevention. It examines how conflict offers opportunities for constructive change and explores different tools and methods that can be used to seize them. Furthermore, it explores the role of communities and movements that exclude violence in seeking sustainable change.

This course aims to provide a basic understanding of the concept of corruption, including its definition and measurement, the links between corruption and security, and between corruption and poverty, whilst also laying the foundation for some policy actions aimed at breaking the poverty/corruption cycle. Furthermore, the course examines how civil society could be harnessed to reduce instances of corruption.

This course explores the intersection among multiculturalism, social conflict, and mediation/dialogue. It explores the nature of modern diversity in relatively stable, mostly democratic, societies, where there are “claims of culture”, that is, where claims to rights, practices, freedoms, entitlements, and benefits are based largely on the cultural attributes and cultural differences of the claimants.

The course encompasses both quantitative and qualitative methods in the discussion of the basic components of the research process: conceptualization and measurement, sample selection, and casual modeling. In addition to teaching techniques and conventions of doing research, the course also familiarises students with the critical issues in the philosophy of science, ethical questions, and how to write a research proposal.

Effective interventions need not necessarily address climate change, migration, and conflict simultaneously but must recognise the layers of relationships among them. The course examines what role mediating factors such as economic opportunity, levels of development, health indicators, and legal status play in the nexus between the environment and migration.

This course examines decision making in interactive environments. Although game theory is mostly economical strategy it has been used in many other branches too, including many military conflicts since its existence.

The course is designed to provide the essential knowledge required by civilian, military and police personnel to function effectively in a UN peace operation. The objective of the course is to advance a shared understanding on the basic principles, guidelines, and policies that allow UN peace operations to function effectively in a coherent manner.

The media plays a major role in creating the perceptions and views of the “other”, and those perceptions are also often mentioned as causing or contributing to conflicts. Peace journalism is a relatively new transdisciplinary field that might be of interest to professional journalists in both developed and developing countries and to civil society activists, university researchers and others interested in the conflict-media nexus.

The course relies on the underlying idea that the two fields of gender and conflict are critically interconnected. This connection is important to understand not only to grasp how gender may impact the emergence and unfolding of conflict, but also to assess how conflict affects women, girls, boys and men and sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) in what concerns violence, health impacts, economic activity, and political and civic inclusion.

Stemming from the acknowledgement of the complex character of contemporary violence, human security focuses on the protection of individual lives and recognizes that threats to human security can arise from various sources. The goal of the course is to present the concept of human security in terms of an organising standard and to introduce the principles that inform the planning, implementation, and evaluation of human security-oriented interventions in post-conflict settings.

The course is designed to provide the essential knowledge required by civilian, military and police personnel to function effectively in a UN peace operation. The objective of the course is to advance a shared understanding on the basic principles, guidelines, and policies that allow UN peace operations to function effectively in a coherent manner.

The course explores the different explanations offered by researchers regarding the emergence of conflicts as an almost unavoidable facet of human life. It outlines the main conflict theories, their core elements as well as the conflict resolution mechanisms that some of them entail. In subsequent stages, tools that can be used to understand conflicts and to design adapted conflict resolution initiatives are described.

When inter- and intra-state conflicts are not handled carefully, systematic violence can affect the political, social, and economic realms of a country or region. By understanding the dynamics of a conflict, practitioners working in the field can develop plans that are more grounded in the actual context. The goal of the course is to provide participants with an advanced knowledge of conflict analysis principles and skills.