MEMORY, TRUTH-TELLING, AND RECONCILIATION IN EDUCATION
Georg Arnhold International Conference
October 27-30, 2026 at the University of Lagos, Nigeria
Education plays a pivotal role in how societies remember the past, confront justice and build pathways towards reconciliation. The conference reflects on the multitude of roles that educational media has played in conflict affected contexts. On the one hand, educational media has been used to perpetuate nationalistic narratives and perpetuate violence. On the other hand, textbooks, digital materials and learning platforms have the potential to act as memory, witness and documentation to support reconciliation processes.
This conference invites scholars, educators, and practitioners as well as policy makers or artists to explore how remembering, truth-telling, and reconciliation unfold within both formal and informal educational contexts. Schools, universities, community learning spaces and formal truth commissions are recognized as sites where historical memory is constructed, contested and transmitted across generations. At the same time, educators are called upon to engage with difficult histories such as colonialism, genocide, war, systemic discrimination and political repression – through pedagogies that foster decolonial approaches, critical reflection and social healing.
The conference is guided by the following core questions:
- How can education support meaningful truth-telling about difficult and contested pasts?
- What role should educational institutions play in shaping collective memory and addressing histories of violence?
- How can pedagogical practices acknowledge epistemic violence while fostering dialogue, recognition and reconciliation across divided communities?
- How might learning about past harms enable students and societies to imagine more just and inclusive futures?
- inherent in the writing of some peoples’ histories while others’ are silenced or given inadequate representation, or when certain ways of knowing and being, often from the majority world, are not recognized by the minority world as knowledge(s) at all.
The conference acknowledges the coloniality of education and actively seeks out theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions that offer decolonial, intersectional and reconciliatory approaches for peace education.
We invite submissions that may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- Teaching Difficult Histories
- Curriculum and the Politics of Memory
- Researching Memory and Truth-Telling in Education
- Community Memory and Educational Partnerships
- Education for Reconciliation and Just Futures
For more detailed information, please see the full call for papers.
The four-day long conference will bring together early-career scholars, senior researchers, and practitioners from around the world. It will provide an interdisciplinary and international forum that will allow participants to debate and critically reflect upon these key issues, strengthen research connections, and support critical reflection to inform future research and practice.
This year's conference will be organized in collaboration with the University of Lagos and the Goethe-Institut Nigeria.
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Workshop with the international Rescue Committee
Part of the Summer Conference is a workshop organized and facilitated by the Airbel Impact Lab, which is the research and innovation arm of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). During the workshop, participants will learn how humanitarian teams use human-centered design to translate research into practical, scalable solutions. Through a hands-on working session, participants will apply these principles to their own projects—identifying where real-world constraints limit impact and developing actionable, testable approaches to address them.
Following the summer conference, up to 5 individuals will be selected to undertake fellowships with the IRC. These individuals will work closely with IRC staff to undertake work which furthers both the IRC’s and the fellows’ interests.
All attendees of the Summer Conference will be welcome to join the incubator and will be eligible for selection to participate in this fellowship with the IRC.
Selected fellows this year will conduct and/or support projects within the Education Research portfolio. An overview of these research portfolios is outlined here, with examples of potential research projects fellows may engage with. Please note this information is subject to change as our projects evolve over the coming year.
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Participation & Scholarships
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How to apply?
The Georg Arnhold Conference primarily welcomes applications from academic experts, post-doctoral scholars and doctoral candidates from the humanities and social sciences, particularly education, history, political sciences, international relations, geography, sociology, law, and anthropology. Practitioners working for international organizations and NGOs with experience and valuable insights in the relevant fields are also welcome to apply. Applications from students enrolled in a master’s program and recent graduates with a master’s degree will be considered in exceptional cases.
The deadline for completed applications is tbd.
Successful applicants will be notified by tbd.
The working language of the Summer Conference will be English.
Please note that participants will be expected to submit a final draft of their paper a week before the conference (by October 19, 2026), with the opportunity to revise after the conference in the event of selection for a publication.
