Date: Friday 13 June

Time: 13-14.30PM

Location: Room 207, 10 The Square, University of Glasgow 

Register now

Programme 

Welcome & introductions: Dr Yulia Nesterova (Lecturer in International and Comparative Education, University of Glasgow) & Dr Asli Ozcelik Olcay (Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of Glasgow) 

Paper 1: "Youth-led Futures and the Social Organisation of Time: Constructing temporalities to facilitate substantive youth-led peace" 

Dr Caitlin Mollica 

Youth-led peacebuilding has gained increased recognition in international development and peace studies. This recognition gained significant momentum due in part, to the youth advocacy associate with the adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) in 2015. Despite this, meaningful participation of youth in institutionalised forms of peacebuilding continues to face systemic barriers. Amongst these is the underexplored but critical issue of the social organisation of time. This paper examines how time is socially constructed and institutionalised in ways that marginalise youth, and how reimagining temporalities can facilitate more substantive youth-led peace processes. 

In the paper, I argue that engaging with temporalities enables a transformative reconfiguration of peacebuilding that centres the lived experiences, rhythms, and futures of young people. By engaging with the ways time is experienced and valued by youth we can better understand one of the key motivators informing interactions between youth and global governance architecture. An inherently transitional period – how youth move through and interact during this time informs their capacity to engage meaningfully in institutional spaces. As such, I suggest that how time is mediated and constructed within these institutions and how youth’s identity is perceived in relation to these constructions will determine the capacity of global governance architecture centre youth-led experiences as an organising logic. 

 Paper 2: "Transformation or just consultation?: Unpacking intergenerational engagement in the YPS agenda"

Dr Helen Berents (with Ingrid Valladares and Yulia Nesterova) 

The concept of intergenerationality in the peace and security space has gained significant attention since the adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security in 2015. Part of this recognition, which led to the development and implementation of National Action Plans (NAPs) in some countries, included a call for more intergenerational approaches to achieving inclusive, durable and sustainable peace. While the YPS Agenda and its resolutions highlight the importance of this collaborative effort across generations, little sustained attention has been given to what is meant when proponents of YPS use the term. We address this by undertaking a critical analysis of 153 YPS documents from the YPS Database that use the term ‘intergenerational’, identifying more than one hundred variations of the term that frame and shape how the agenda is understood and implemented. We find that intergenerationality often is invoked as another form of reproducing the status quo through tokenistic, extractive and consultative practices. Our analysis shows that often the broad and sometimes ambiguous definition and use of intergenerationality become either a symbol of generational collaboration or leaves the door open for its tokenistic and superficial applicability across different contexts. This compounded with institutional resistance, generational power imbalances and the lack of concrete policy frameworks has hindered the effective adoption of intergenerational approaches in peace and security efforts. 

Speaker Biographies:

Dr Caitlin Mollica is a lecturer in International Relations and Deputy Program Convenor for B(Bus). Her research interests include youth’s political participation, gender-inclusive justice and governance practices, and human rights. Caitlin’s primary research considers the substantive participation of young people in transitional justice, peacebuilding, and human rights practices. Her sole authored book: Agency & Ownership in Reconciliation: Youth and the Practice of Transitional Justice was published in 2024 by SUNY Press. She has a forthcoming co-edited book with Bristol University Press Parents, Children and the Ripples of Transitional Justice. Caitlin has previously worked as a policy officer for Amnesty International, and has established research partnerships with UN Women, Dags Hammarskjold Foundation, and Support Her. Co. 

Dr Helen Berents is a feminist scholar centrally interested in the interconnected areas of the presence and roles of young people in global politics; everyday experiences of conflict and peacebuilding; and local-global relations in peace and security governance. She is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University. She has recently completed an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship that examined youth leadership and inclusion in the context of the emergent global ‘Youth, Peace and Security’ agenda. She is the author of Young People and Everyday Peace (2018), and co-editor of Children, Childhoods and Global Politics (2023, with J Marshall Beier) and Youth and Sustainable Peace (2024, with Siobhan McEvoy-Levy and Catherine Bolten). She lives and works on the unceded lands of the Turrbal and Yuggera Peoples. 

First published: 9 June 2025

<< Events


Register for the event