Now called Berghof Conflict Research, the organisation was initially established in 1993 as the Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management. The research centre is a permanent project of the Berghof Foundation . The name ‘Berghof’ comes from a mountainside farm near Tübingen, Germany, which was the childhood home of Professor Georg Zundel, who founded the Berghof Foundation for Conflict Studies (now Berghof Foundation) in 1971 and named it in memory of his parents.

At the outset, the primary rationale for setting up the research centre was to help develop a constructive response to the new types of violent conflict emerging in post-Cold War Europe, especially in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Alongside applied research for addressing these conflicts in nonviolent ways, the research centre also served to create a focal point in continental Europe for the dissemination, application and discussion of concepts like ‘conflict resolution’ and ‘mediation’. Both approaches had been playing an increasingly prominent role in the English-speaking world since the 1980s, but were still relatively new to Germany in the early 1990s.

Since 1993, our research agenda has evolved in a coherent and responsive manner. This both reflects cutting-edge trends and demonstrates the unique contribution we have made in the field of conflict transformation.

The Early Days: Introducing ICR
During the initial phase of our research, primary attention was given to the Interactive Conflict Resolution (ICR) approach. ICR is a workshop methodology emphasising the need for joint conflict analysis among influential representatives of key stakeholders. This form of analysis is understood as a precondition for joint initiatives towards resolution and transformation of the conflict. Several early projects, such as the Romanian-Hungarian Dialogue Project and, later, the Georgia-Abkhazia ‘Schlaining’ Dialogue Process, were rooted in this tradition.

These ICR-related activities provided us with two guiding insights on the role of cultural and power differences in the context of violent political conflict. The first was scepticism about how the political culture of the English-speaking world might have created blind spots with regard to conflict resolution between members of different cultures. The second was the observation that nearly all ethnopolitical conflicts are characterised by significant power asymmetries.

The Mid 1990s: Supporting Peace Constituencies
Both of these issues – and the links between them – became the second focus of the research centre’s work in the mid 1990s. While the collaboration of macro-political and ICR approaches (or civil society tracks) was one of the first key issues addressed in the English-language discourse, the state-centred tradition in continental Europe made this collaboration more difficult. Consequently, this interaction became the third focus of our work: the contributions of civil society to peacebuilding and peacemaking.

A key term in this latter context was ‘peace constituencies’, which refers to a range of civil society actors engaged in peacebuilding. More recently, the meaning of this term has been extended to include a broad spectrum of key stakeholder groups – insofar as their representatives are actively involved in peacemaking.

The Late 1990s: Peace and Development
Our fourth focus was the nexus between peace and development. This started at the policy level, with advice to several development and humanitarian agencies on integrating aspects of conflict sensitivity and conflict transformation into their own work.

Later this focus shifted to a ground-level exploration of concrete measures for linking peace and development issues in practice. Introducing this nexus into the conflict resolution discourse—or rather, integrating conflict resolution into development discourses—was a fundamental step in mainstreaming conflict transformation during the second half of the 1990s.

1999: A Landmark Year
Quickly to become an internationally recognised resource, we launched the Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation in 1999. Set up as an interactive web-based forum, the Handbook is designed for academics and practitioners to discuss state-of-the-art knowledge in this field. Based on the success of this project, a first print version was published in 2004. A second print volume is planned for 2010.

Spurred on by growing interest and demand for the Handbook, we have since developed further publication formats for addressing particularly significant issues. Most notable among these is the Berghof Handbook Dialogue Series. Here, a selected hot topic is debated in a lead article that is also accompanied by several commentaries from diverse viewpoints. Always written from both academic and practitioner perspectives, our contributors are highly respected figures in their areas of work.

Moving Towards Practice
In addition to applied research, we have also engaged in promoting conflict resolution and conflict transformation through more practice-oriented activities—policy advice, training, and networking among a broad community of like-minded organisations.

For example, we were instrumental in establishing the OSCE summer school at the Austrian Study Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution in Schlaining and the first courses for comprehensive mediation training in Switzerland.

We were also a founding member of the German Platform for Peaceful Conflict Management and the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO) in Brussels. In addition, we helped to set up both the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) and the European Platform for Conflict Prevention. We have always played an active role in contributing to the debates initiated by these and other networks, which we continue to do today.

Reflecting a further step in the direction of more practice-related interests, we established the Resource Network for Conflict Studies and Transformation (RNCST) in Sri Lanka in 2001. Given this move away from a primary focus on action research, in 2004 a second organisation was established in Berlin—Berghof Peace Support.

Set up as the sister organisation to the research centre, this new independent organisation allowed us to significantly enhance our capacity for practice in the field of conflict transformation. Since the beginning, both organisations have cooperated closely on a range of different projects, whose overall aim is to strengthen the links between theory and practice.

Recent History: 2000 and Beyond
The last decade has seen a productive consolidation of our early research interests. In addition to the on-going popularity of the Handbook, we have developed greater expertise in supporting peace constituencies, as well as promoting dialogue and reconciliation in post-conflict societies. In particular, these aspects of our action research and consulting activities have focused on projects in the Caucasus and Western Balkans.

We have also devoted attention to other key areas in conflict transformation, including research on: the links between theory and practice in this field; action research as a methodology; and further developing approaches for evaluating peacebuilding work.

One highlight of our work on the issue of evaluation was participating in the global ‘Reflecting on Peace Practice’ project. Led by the Collaborative for Development Action (CDA) in the United States, this project engaged more than 200 different organisations to investigate how their work in peacebuilding could be made more effective.

Current Interests
Drawing on the varied range of experience and knowledge that we have accumulated since we first opened our doors, our research and consulting profile today addresses three inter-related topics: 1) basic principles and processes of peacebuilding, reconciliation and dealing with the past in post-war societies; 2) transitions from violence to politics among resistance and liberation movements; and 3) interactions between state and non-state actors in processes of conflict transformation.

These three themes will continue to shape our research agenda in the coming years, with increased emphasis on third-party funded projects and on providing support for young academics who are working towards relevant masters’ and PhD dissertations.

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