“Peacebuilding and Motorcycling: Re-Framing Narratives in Documentary Filmmaking”

6:30 p.m.  Keynote Presentation

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Jaremey McMullin

Jaremey McMullin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. He received his DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and has published research on ex-combatant reintegration and postwar veterans’ transition in International Peacekeeping.

Dr. McMullin’s work bridges scholarly research and documentary film-making. The latter, specifically, explores youth peacebuilding processes through a multi-year project, Motorcycling as Peacebuilding in Liberia, that analyses the peacebuilding impacts and challenges of the commercial motorcycling sector in Liberia. His other primary research interest areas are the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants and the politics of veterans’ return from war. This research interprets the impacts of reintegration and veterans’ assistance programmes on post-conflict identities, conflict resolution, and security, and identifies the consequences of incomplete reintegration. A related project considers veteran-led modalities of assistance and veteran-to-veteran peer support in the United States.

His 2013 monograph, Ex-Combatants and the Post-Conflict State: Challenges of Reintegration, was published in the Rethinking Political Violence series by Palgrave Macmillan. He has published articles and book chapters on the narration of youth peacebuilding identity and reintegration strategies (Review of International Studies), and on ex-combatant reintegration in Namibia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the United States (Review of International Studies, International Peacekeeping, International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Conflict, Security & Development). He has also published articles on child soldiering (Third World Quarterly) and the role of non-state criminal groups during conflict (Civil Wars). He directed and produced a documentary short film series on everyday peace, Liberia: Legacies of Peace (2019) and another documentary short, Silkies (2020), on prevention of U.S. veteran suicide. He has written several reports and evaluations for the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section at the United Nations Department of Peace Operations, including a 2020 report, ‘The Legacy of DDR in Liberia’, and he serves on the Research Working Group of the Integrated DDR Training Group.

More recently, he, along with other faculty at St. Andrews, created an MA in Peacebuilding and Mediation, in which students explore the relationship between formal and official peacebuilding and mediation initiatives and informal, unofficial, and community-based efforts. This area of interest has grown for him and will likely be the focal point of his talk, which builds on past Wang Center events that emphasize depolarization through dialogue and civil debate.