Core courses

This course introduces students to the theories, concepts, histories, and actors that are fundamental to the field of peace, conflict, and justice. Students will discuss meanings, causes, obstacles, and sustainability of peace and justice through the discussion of historical and contemporary cases from around the world. Stemming from the interdisciplinary aspect of the field, students will learn a wide range of theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented perspectives on thematic topics such as protection and violation of human rights, social and economic inequalities, and causes of violence and oppression. This course is intended for first year PCJ students and it serves as a gateway for all other courses offered in the PCJ program. This course is a requirement for PCJ majors and specialists.

This course introduces students to key research methods employed in the study of peace, conflict and justice. It considers both qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research frameworks prominent in PCJ research drawn from a range of disciplines and approaches. Some methods explored in this course might include: descriptive analysis, correlational studies, bivariate or multivariate regression models, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and country case studies. The class teaches students how to read, understand and critique these frameworks and the scholarship they influence/produce. Concepts of internal and external validity, inductive and deductive reasoning, and ethics in research will also be covered. This course is a requirement for PCJ majors and specialists.

This course builds on various multi-disciplinary approaches to explore how inequalities shape violence, conflict, and post-conflict dynamics. It teaches students to understand and engage critically in debates in the field and to discover connections between the power structures that shape the emergence of violent conflicts, their dynamics, and their legacies. In addition, this course will offer students practical tools to analyze the intersection of conflict and inequality, as well as the implications of that intersection for pursuing peace. This course is a requirement for PCJ majors and specialists.

Students are given a service learning placement in the GTA in partnership with local, national, or international not-for-profits or governmental organizations. Students work in teams of 2-7 students, and help partner organizations solve important problems. Student teams mostly work independently of the organization, while receiving some mentoring, critique, and advice from the organizations. Students are expected to invest 5-7 hours per week in course projects, in addition to class time. In this non-competitive course, students are asked to engage in deep personal reflection, help teammates, advise other teams, and contribute their skills and talents to their community partners. The course will emphasize how groups work to achieve community goals, how grassroots politics works, the power of social capital, and how these topics link to questions of conflict resolution, brokering peace, and achieving justice. Required for PCJ Majors and Specialists.

This course guides each student through their own individual research project, embedded in an interactive group learning process, to offer an applied introduction to research methods for peace, conflict and justice studies. Students work through the research in the field of peace, conflict and justice studies, such as: identifying a research question, learning how to write a critical literature review, developing a rigorous research design, and applying quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods to answering research inquires. The final deliverable is a draft of a research proposal or an empirical research-based paper. This course is a requirement for PCJ Specialists and open to PCJ Majors with approval from the Director.

Topics vary annually. The objective of the course is to explore emerging issues in Peace and Conflict Studies. The focus of the course will be on a specific topic, rather than a broad survey of the field. Students can take PCJ460H1 in lieu of PCH444H1.

This course explores selected issues in the field of Peace, Conflict and Justice. Topics may vary from year to year. Through a suite of recent readings, students will strive to critically examine implications and challenges of, and solutions to the issues being studied. Please visit the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict and Justice website for current offering information.

The goal of this course is to introduce students to data literacy and applications in the topics of peace, conflict, and justice. The course is broadly divided into two parts. The first part will introduce data in the context of peace, conflict, and justice studies and outline the research process. Students will learn advanced quantitative research designs and will work with fundamental descriptive statistics tools. Students will work with different datasets, learn how to summarize data for different types of variables through graphs and tables, and explore measures of association between variables. In the second part of the course, students will work on data projects related to peace, conflict, and justice. Students will also design their own research relevant in PCJ. This course is a requirement for PCJ Specialists.

This course explores selected issues in the field of Peace, Conflict ands Justice. Topics may vary from year to year. Through a suite of recent readings, students will strive to critically examine implications and challenges of, and solutions to the issues being studied. Please visit the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict and Justice website for current offering information.

This course examines the role of institutions that respond to crime and violence. We study the role of institutional actors centering on criminal justice: we focus in particular on criminal justice institutions, but also community organizations, government agencies, international organizations, journalists, and others–in identifying, naming, and acting upon crime and violence. We also study the strategies these institutions adopt in responding to crime, violence, and insecurity, along with evidence about how they do so and outcomes of their interventions. Finally, we attend to the relationship between criminal justice and other social outcomes, including health and well-being, collective memory, skepticism, social movements, and civic participation. Throughout the course we rely on a wide range of materials, so that in most weeks students will engage with a combination of perspectives, including social science research, legal materials, testimonies, official documents, and journalistic accounts.