Helen Berents – författare

Young People and Everyday Peace is grounded in the stories of young people who live in Los Altos de Cazucá, an informal peri-urban community in Soacha, to the south of Colombia’s capital Bogotá. The occupants of this community have fled the armed conflict and exist in a state of marginalisation and social exclusion amongst ongoing violences conducted by armed gangs and government forces. Young people negotiate these complexities and offer pointed critiques of national politics as well as grounded aspirations for the future. Colombia’s protracted conflict and its effects on the population raise many questions about how we think about peacebuilding in and with communities of conflict-affected people. Building on contemporary debates in International Relations about post-liberal, everyday peace, Helen Berents draws on feminist International Relations and embodiment theory to pay meaningful attention to those on the margins. She conceptualises a notion of embodied-everyday-peace-amidst-violence to recognise the presence and voice of young people as stakeholders in everyday efforts to respond to violence and insecurity. In doing so, Berents argues for and engages a more complex understanding of the everyday, stemming from the embodied experiences of those centrally present in conflicts. Taking young people’s lives and narratives seriously recognises the difficulties of protracted conflict, but finds potential to build a notion of an embodied everyday amidst violence, where a complex and fraught peace can be found.Young People and Everyday Peace will be of interest to scholars of Latin American Studies, International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies.

Young People and Everyday Peace is grounded in the stories of young people who live in Los Altos de Cazucá, an informal peri-urban community in Soacha, to the south of Colombia’s capital Bogotá. The occupants of this community have fled the armed conflict and exist in a state of marginalisation and social exclusion amongst ongoing violences conducted by armed gangs and government forces. Young people negotiate these complexities and offer pointed critiques of national politics as well as grounded aspirations for the future. Colombia’s protracted conflict and its effects on the population raise many questions about how we think about peacebuilding in and with communities of conflict-affected people. Building on contemporary debates in International Relations about post-liberal, everyday peace, Helen Berents draws on feminist International Relations and embodiment theory to pay meaningful attention to those on the margins. She conceptualises a notion of embodied-everyday-peace-amidst-violence to recognise the presence and voice of young people as stakeholders in everyday efforts to respond to violence and insecurity. In doing so, Berents argues for and engages a more complex understanding of the everyday, stemming from the embodied experiences of those centrally present in conflicts. Taking young people’s lives and narratives seriously recognises the difficulties of protracted conflict, but finds potential to build a notion of an embodied everyday amidst violence, where a complex and fraught peace can be found.Young People and Everyday Peace will be of interest to scholars of Latin American Studies, International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2025Sustainable peace involves more than simply including youth in official peacebuilding mechanisms or recognizing their local peacebuilding work; it requires a transformation in thinking about the youth as actors in the world of security and peace. Using case studies from around the globe, the contributors to this volume analyse why states are afraid of their young people, why 'youth participation' in formal peace processes matters but is insufficient, and ways that young people are working outside of official systems to create and nurture peace on their own terms. The volume offers guidance for ways to bridge the disconnect that exists between institutional assumptions and expectations for youth as peacebuilders and the actual sustainable peace leadership of youth. Throughout, it emphasises a critical approach to peacebuilding with, for and by youth.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2025Sustainable peace involves more than simply including youth in official peacebuilding mechanisms or recognizing their local peacebuilding work; it requires a transformation in thinking about the youth as actors in the world of security and peace. Using case studies from around the globe, the contributors to this volume analyse why states are afraid of their young people, why 'youth participation' in formal peace processes matters but is insufficient, and ways that young people are working outside of official systems to create and nurture peace on their own terms. The volume offers guidance for ways to bridge the disconnect that exists between institutional assumptions and expectations for youth as peacebuilders and the actual sustainable peace leadership of youth. Throughout, it emphasises a critical approach to peacebuilding with, for and by youth.

Though children have never been absent from international studies discourse, they are too often reduced to a few simplistic and unidimensional framings. This book seeks to recover children’s agency and to recognize the complex variety of childhoods and the global issues that affect them. Written by an international list of contributors from Europe, Africa, North America, and Australasia, chapters present highly nuanced accounts of children and childhoods across global political time and space split into three broad sections: imagined childhoods, governed childhoods, and lived childhoods. Through its analysis, the book demonstrates how international relations is, somewhat paradoxically, quite deeply invested in a particular rendering of childhood as, primarily, a time of innocence, vulnerability, and incapacity.

Though children have never been absent from international studies discourse, they are too often reduced to a few simplistic and unidimensional framings. This book seeks to recover children’s agency and to recognize the complex variety of childhoods and the global issues that affect them. Written by an international list of contributors from Europe, Africa, North America, and Australasia, chapters present highly nuanced accounts of children and childhoods across global political time and space split into three broad sections: imagined childhoods, governed childhoods, and lived childhoods. Through its analysis, the book demonstrates how international relations is, somewhat paradoxically, quite deeply invested in a particular rendering of childhood as, primarily, a time of innocence, vulnerability, and incapacity.