Podcast 20: Challenging Hope: surviving conflict, building peace
This special conversation is a continuation of a conversation that began at our annual conference in June 2024 between Dr Oded Adomi Leshem and Dr Munyurangabo Benda. You can find their presentations, and the start of that conversation on our youtube channel.
Listen to the episode here or via most of the usual podcast sources.
Find a transcript of this episode here.
Dr Munyurangabo Benda is a Tutor at the Centre for Black Theology at the Queen’s Theological Foundation in Birmingham. While studying law, the genocide against the Tutsi broke out in Rwanda and it led him to study theology to ask what a person seeking to do right ought to do when the foundations of law and order have been shattered. His PhD thesis from the University of Manchester used postcolonial analysis to critically compare the agency of Muslim and Christian communities in the genocide of 1994.
His current research interests in Theology revolve around the various intersections between active/practical faith and the public/political sphere.
Dr Oded Adomi Leshem is a political psychologist and peace activist who has been fascinated by the concept of hope for at least a decade. His interest in hope (and its absence) began in 2012 with his first experimental studies on hope inducement. Since then, he has published numerous articles and book chapters on hope and despair as political phenomena and lectured on hope to a wide range of academic and non-academic audiences. His new book Hope Amidst Conflict was recently published by Oxford University Press.
Oded teaches and conducts his research at the Hebrew University, where he serves as a Senior Research Associate. He is also Research Fellow at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace.