Main Products
Key Theories & Frameworks
1. Integrated Contact Theory
Intergroup contact is a continuum of different forms of programs that are based on the interaction of people from various social groups, including horizontal contact (between racial, ethnic, religious, and/or national groups) and vertical contact (between communities, civic society government, police and representatives of other institutions).
Integrated contact theory provides tools and practices in four main areas:
- Improving the process of the contact programming, including the four conditions for contact, and the 3Ts: trust building, threat reduction, and trauma healing.
- Improving dynamics of horizontal contacts (between ethnic, religious groups, victims/ former paramilitary, and communities), including deep work, different forms of identity work, and the 3-stage categorization process.
- Improving dynamics of vertical contacts (between communities and government, police, etc.), including radical storytelling and bridging conceptual barriers.
- Improving project management, including theories of change (TOCs), inclusion, sustainability, and improvement in communication.

2. The BRIDGE framework

BRIDGE Framework systemically describes strategies that create a foundation for sustainable peace. Bonding strategies create mutuality, the interdependency of positive change, and the ability to find common ways forward. Through Reassuring strategies, the identities of the parties involved become recognized, respected, and accounted for as a crucial part of a peace process. Involving strategies stress the importance of involving a wide array of actors and activities of all sectors of society.
Determining Guides strategy concentrates on the core issues of identity dynamics within each party and between parties involved, emphasizing the diversity of views on just peace within the society and the need to account for all positions in the production of a common language of peace. Equalizing strategies address not only power differences between parties but also a variance between conflict sides’ perspectives on what justice might entail.
To get more information on practices, and tactics related to each of the five strategies, please click HERE.
3. Early warning system for identity-based conflicts
The dynamics of identity-based conflict are outlined in the 4-C model, consisting of four stages: Comparison, Competition, Confrontation, and Counteraction (Korostelina, 2007). Members of interactive communities possess multiple identities leading to the formation of stereotypes, biases, and prejudices even in peaceful and cooperative societies. Unfavorable perceptions of outgroups stem from various psychological processes, including a need to be both different from others and included in a group, favorable group comparisons and intergroup prejudice, relative deprivation, and the global attribution error. In conflicts of interests, negative intergroup perceptions and ingroup favoritism can transform into active hostility toward the outgroup. This collective angst is based on perceived threats from outgroups, even among those who did not directly experience violence. Thus, social identity is employed to make sense of the situation of competition, exclusion, and marginalization. Once a society is divided into antagonistic groups, social identities become central to the conflict, creating moral boundaries and collective axiology that dehumanizes and demonizes outgroup members as well as prescribes actions against the outgroup.