This dissertation investigated how the Gikuyu people of central Kenya understood justice, forgiveness and trauma healing or their absence during a decade of intra-group reciprocal violence. This qualitative research study employed the narrative research method utilizing the "Williams Model" (Riessman, 2008). Field interviews were guided by a primary research question: What do the narratives of perpetrators and victims in reciprocal violence reveal about their understanding of justice, forgiveness and trauma healing or their absence? Fourteen research participants aged 78 to 92 years shared their full narratives. Current conflict analysis literature overwhelmingly centers on the victims and less on perpetrators. The reseach sample allowed perpetrator voices to be heard. The findings of this study suggest that the absence of justice as defined by the stakeholders is a primary perceived barrier towards forgiveness and trauma healing in post-conflict environments. While restorative justice literature offers hope in repairing harm, it's applicability in this study bears some complications when faced with the unreadiness of perpetrators to face their victims in a voluntary process. An extended discussion on restorative justice is offered under implications. Fair land re-distribution was identified as the most preferred response to the question of justice but is yet to be addressed. This stalemate suggests the need for a new negotiated framing and definition of justice if progress is to be expected. The study found out that forgiveness and trauma healing are desired but perceived as impossible goals. Researchers and policy makers could benefit from the findings especially in promoting native and localized restorative justice processes in order to terminate cycles of reciprocal violence.

In the age of social media, many Black women use online platforms and social networks as a means of connecting with other Black women and to share their experiences of social oppression and misogynoir, anti-Black misogyny. Examining the ways that Black women use technology as a tool to actively wage resistance to racial, gender and class oppression is critical for understanding their role in the human struggle for greater peace, beauty, freedom and justice. This study explored the experiences of 12 Black women in the United States and Britain who use social media for storytelling and testimony about their lives as racial and gendered minorities. The research questions were: How do Black women in the United States and Britain use social media for storytelling and testimony about their lives as Black women? What is the lived experience of using social media for this purpose? How does the experience affect them and what meaning do they find in using social media for this purpose? Using an interpretative phenomenological approach, the researcher developed findings which show that Black women experience social media as an affirming, safe space for counter storytelling, education and transformation, negotiating identity and for connection to a larger, African diasporic identity. This research serves to increase the knowledge and scholarship about how Black women challenge damaging stereotypes and restrictive social narratives and how they use social media to challenge structural and ideological violence directed at them in an effort to promote dialogue and healing.

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Sweden’s role internationally is often cited as a paradox which is argued to have its origin in the opposition between the state’s international humanitarianism and its large arms export. The tension here has often been examined from the perspectives of militarization in research on the subject. This thesis instead argued that a comprehensive understanding of peace is needed to analyze the paradox holistically. By semiotically engaging with the Swedish Government's annual reports on arms export control, this thesis could identify the construction of peace within the arms export during the years 2014-2021. A usage of the combined perspectives of pacifization, militarization and an in-depth review of the peace concept, allowed for a comprehensive understanding of peace within these discourses. The thesis discovered that elements of the Swedish arms export were framed as (1) a precondition for peace, (2) an agreement of peace, and (3) an enhancement of peace. Moreover, the material revealed the juxtaposition of two different versions of peace, one liberal and one emancipatory understanding. As these versions are associated with different values and practices of peace, their coexistence in Swedish arms export is argued to be the heart of Sweden’s foreign policy paradox.