Welcome
I am an Associate Professor of Practice in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University.
background
I received my PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015 and my BA in sociology from Middlebury College in 2002. My work focuses on the relationship between the state, international organizations and civil society in contexts affected by violence. Through mixed methodologies, I try to understand how local knowledge influences transformative solutions toward peace and justice. The importance of engaging local communities to address big social problems is well established. My research asks what the local means and why it does—or does not—make a difference.
This work addresses multiple policy fields and geographies, united by the common thread of trying to understand where local experience and knowledge fit in. Currently, I am researching transitional justice processes in Colombia, public safety reform and affordable housing in California, and alternatives to criminal justice in Brooklyn, NY. I have received support from the National Science Foundation, United State Institute of Peace, Inter-American Foundation, Humanity United and UC Berkeley Possibility Lab for this work. You can read more about these and other projects and their associated publications here.
engagement & consulting
I also collaborate with diverse organizations, always with the goal of making my research useful for addressing social problems and respectful of the communities who these problems ultimately affect. I have written more about this engagement and the organizations I try to support here.
As a former evaluation specialist at the United Nations and International Criminal Court, I continue to use my evaluation training and knowledge of the UN and international organizations to support UN Offices and Departments and other organizations. You can read more about this work and the support I offer here.
➤ contact
Master of Science in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution
School of Professional Studies
Columbia University
New York, NY
peter.dixon@columbia.edu
@pedrodixon
recent activity
Dr. Geraldine Downey, Director of Columbia’s Center for Justice, and I received a Societal Impact Seed Grant to pursue our work in New York City on identifying how and why local voice matters for public safety and criminal justice policy.
I presented my work on safety and coexistence in the US and Colombia at a webinar for the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution program at Columbia University.
I presented at a USIP-sponsored seminar on local engagement for monitoring, evaluation and learning, organized for US field missions participating in the US Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability, funded through the Global Fragility Act.
I’ve been working with the Salzburg Seminar program on Youth Violence. We recently drafted and released this Statement, bringing together voices from the US and dozens of other countries.
I returned to Middlebury College (my alma mater) on May 1 to give a talk on Everyday Peace around the World, part of Midd’s exciting new center on Conflict Transformation.
I was recently in Salzburg, Austria for the Salzburg Global Seminar’s multi-year series on building a whole-system approach to addressing youth experiences of violence, with insight from diverse activists, practitioners, officials, and researchers on best practices from their countries and contexts.
Affiliations
I am a member of the Advisory Board of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation, which seeks to learn lessons from this vast community that can be adapted to the issues and questions that are most pressing for Middlebury College.
I’m a Board Member at Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI), a peacebuilding and research NGO that connects scholars and practitioners interested in elevating the everyday lived reality of communities to inform policy solutions.
I am a Faculty Affiliate at Possibility Lab at US Berkeley, which works to bring data-driven solutions to complex social problems.
I am a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar program on Global Innovations on Youth Violence, Safety and Justice, which brings together diverse stakeholders to address the legal, economic, and social weaknesses and inefficiencies of judicial and custodial systems.
“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.”
Banner Photo: Peter Dixon, Oakland, California