The experience and learning points from the developing RISING Global Peace Forum have informed future plans. RISING has become a global brand, with several thousand regular followers from across the globe and it sits alongside a number of like-minded forums and festivals. RISING’s strength is its distinctiveness, its originality and its mandate to share and inspire. It has become a critical part of the Centre’s work and showcases the ground-breaking research that Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR) undertakes.

Professor Qvortrup

The leadership of RISING will be further strengthened with the appointment of Professor Matt Qvortrup as the new Academic Director for RISING. Matt will lead a refresh of the original concept of the Forum as a place for dialogue and sharing between the amazing participants that attended. It aims to be a learning forum and where problems are shared, debated and, at times, resolved.

As Matt outlined: “We are above all interested in the doers; those who have personally been involved in initiating peace-talks, those who have secured a deal and those who have helped implement the deals. So, we are interested in diplomats, politicians and, above all, negotiators who can tell others what they did to get a peace deal.”

“We will be filming the discussions between participants and we will then, subsequently, create a documentary we can share on the Internet. In addition to Rising 2018, we will also have a number of smaller events, for example we are planning a Rising Refugees in September of this year and we are also in the process of planning smaller events in Colombia and in Baltimore in the USA.”

RISING started as a new and innovative platform that could bring people, policymakers and peacebuilders together to share and showcase, to inspire and be inspired – to enable meetings, dialogue and the exchange of ideas. Above all, RISING promotes peacefulness and peaceful relations.