Stephanie Golob | Post-Conflict Societies and the (Conflictual) Politics of Memory

In this talk, Stephanie Golob will discuss the temporal dimension of processes of accountability in post-conflict societies. Specifically, expanding from the limited horizon of “Transitional Justice,” she will examine cases of countries whose conflicts lie many decades in the past, and whose politics of memory remain unresolved and highly conflictual. Why do these “memory wars” emerge and re-emerge, and what kinds of politics are required to provide resolution for victims, their families, and for society overall? Drawing upon over a decade of research on the citizen-led movement exhuming mass graves from the Civil War and Franco dictatorship in Spain, she will discuss the way both national and international law play a role in generating and confronting hegemonic memory regimes that create obstacles to the process of accountability for crimes of an authoritarian past.

The discussion will be moderated by ACR-GNY President Nick Pozek.

President's FORUM. is a series of monthly discussions on timely topics in conflict resolution. All President's FORUM. events are free for ACR-GNY members. Join now!

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Stephanie R. Golob is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Baruch College, CUNY where she teaches courses on globalization, Latin American politics, and transitional justice. She is also Faculty in the Ph.D./M.A. Program in Political Science at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the Founding Director of ISLA-The Initiative for the Study of Latin America, based at Baruch's Weissman School of Arts and Sciences. Her scholarship on the globalization of justice - with a focus on Chile and Spain - has been awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Resident Fellowship at the Center for the Humanities, The Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Frank Cass Prize from the journal Democratization. For the past decade, Dr. Golob has participated as a member of an international research team, based at the Spanish National Research Council (CCHS-CSIC), studying the legal and political impact of post-atrocity mass grave exhumations in comparative perspective. Her research on the role of national and international law in the contentious politics of memory in Spain has appeared recently in the volume Memory Laws and Historical Justice: The Politics of Criminalizing the Past (Palgrave, 2022).

Date: Friday, October 24, 2025
Time: 12:00 - 1:00pm (Eastern Time)
Cost: ACR-GNY Members attend for free; Non-members attend for $20 (scholarships available)

Location: Virtual via ZOOM

Pre-registration is required.

Contact us with questions at questions@acrgny.org.

This program is supported by ACR-GNY's 365 Sponsor:

Come and be a part of our annual event - running for over 20 years! - where we applaud the dedication of conflict resolution experts and volunteers while recognizing outstanding contributions within the ADR field.

This year's Mediation Settlement Day will be hybrid - join us in person or virtually!

We are proud to honor this year's Chuck Newman Award recipients:

Lisa Courtney & Duncan MacKay

Lisa M. Courtney, Esq. is the Director of the Division of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in the NYS Office of Court Administration, where she works to oversee and promote the growth of alternative dispute resolution programs. She is an advisor to the Chief Judge’s Statewide ADR Advisory Committee, former co-chair of the New York Women’s Bar Association’s ADR Committee, and winner of the NY Peace Institute’s Peace Raiser Award (2019). Lisa received her J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and graduated cum laude from Columbia College. She speaks Spanish and Hebrew.

Duncan MacKay serves as the Deputy General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer at Eversource Energy (NYSE: ES), a Fortune 500 and Standard & Poor’s 500 energy company based in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire that operates New England’s largest energy delivery system. Eversource and its more than 10,000 employees are committed to safety, reliability, environmental leadership and stewardship for its 4.6 million electric, natural gas and water customers. Duncan has been with Eversource since 1996, following 8 years in private practice as a labor & employment attorney and litigator for the Hartford-based law firm Robinson & Cole.

Duncan leads a team of attorneys responsible for advising and representing the company on a broad range of legal matters, including labor and employment law, employee benefits, state and federal regulatory compliance, dispute prevention and resolution, corporate governance, finance, and securities law.

As Chief Compliance Officer, Duncan oversees Eversource’s enterprise-wide compliance program. He collaborates closely with the Enterprise Risk Management and Internal Audit teams, as well as senior business leaders, to proactively identify, assess, and mitigate compliance, regulatory, and litigation risks.

A recognized leader in dispute prevention and resolution, Duncan has championed the adoption of innovative strategies across the Eversource enterprise. His initiatives include the integration of dispute prevention and stepped ADR clauses in commercial contracts, early case evaluation protocols, and the strategic use of dispute prevention and ADR mechanisms to resolve issues before they escalate into litigation. “There are often business solutions and other creative resolutions to business-related conflicts that dispute prevention and alternative dispute resolution approaches and techniques enable, particularly with established ongoing business counterparties, that are simply missed in traditional win-lose civil litigation.”

Duncan is deeply engaged in the broader ADR community. He is a longtime member of the Executive Advisory Committee of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR)—an independent nonprofit organization that promotes the prevention and resolution of conflict to better enable the pursuit of purpose—co-chairs CPR’s Dispute Prevention Committee, and is a past chair of its Energy, Oil & Gas Committee. He is also a member the AAA ICDR Energy Advisory Committee, and was part of the first cohort of invited members to join the Association of Commercial and Transactional ADR Professionals (ACT-ADR), where he is the leader of its newly established Dispute Prevention Working Group.

In partnership with the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and collaboration with ACC’s Litigation Network, Duncan is spearheading the formation of the ACC’s first ADR Subcommittee, aimed at promoting best practices and innovation in corporate dispute management.

Duncan’s professional affiliations include active roles on the ADR Committees of the Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Energy Bar Associations (EBA), and he previously co-chaired the EBA’s ADR Committee. Duncan served as a member of the Connecticut Commission on Civil Court ADR, where he contributed to recommendations for enhancing the state judiciary’s ADR programs.

Duncan is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a BA in Legal Studies, and a graduate, cum laude, from Suffolk University Law School in Boston, where he met his wife (Julie) of 35 years, also an attorney, and have made their home in Connecticut and have three grown children.

DATE: Wednesday, October 29, 2025

TIME: 6:00 - 8:00pm (EST)

Hybrid - Attend in person or virtually!

LOCATION: American Arbitration Association - International Centre for Dispute Resolution (AAA-ICDR) | Zoom participation available

ADDRESS: 150 E. 42nd Street, Fl. 17, New York, NY

Refreshments will be served.

Thank you to our hosts at AAA-ICDR!

Questions? Email us at questions@acrgny.org.

This program is supported by ACR-GNY's 365 Sponsor:

 

ACR-GNY & CUNY Dispute Resolution Center at John Jay College present

Re-imagining Dialogue: Reflections and Insights on Convening, Circulation and Movement to Build Trust and Stitch Together Disparate Groups

John Paul Lederach will discuss his reflections of decades of countless past dialogue experiences where what happened before, between and after convenings and face-to-face interaction proved highly significant but often was underestimated and under invested. He has been exploring how circulation offers a different approach to building understanding and even consensus than convening representatives. Circulation refers to a method of conflict resolution and peacebuilding that focuses on continuous, decentralized movement and connection with parties. It's a process of strategic travel, or "circulation" through communities, learning to stitch together disparate groups and share insights, much like how insects and spiders build webs and pollinate resources. This approach emphasizes building trust and relationship at the local level, and stitching, continuously sharing and connecting ideas across different spheres to build a more resilient system. Circulation is rarely perceived as a strategy, mostly it is envisioned as preparation for the real work. John Paul asks, What if the inverse were more accurate: The real genius of dialogue lies in the quality of cultivation and circulation. He will draw examples from past experiences and explore current applications.

JOHN PAUL LEDERACH

John Paul Lederach’s vocation is a practitioner in local and national peace processes with extensive experience in Latin America, Africa, Southeast and Central Asia, and Europe. He is widely known for the development of culturally based approaches to conflict transformation and the design and implementation of integrative and strategic approaches to peacebuilding. He is a haikuist, potter, and woodworker who pursues the integration of the arts and peacebuilding.

Lederach is Professor Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame and a Senior Fellow with Humanity United. He is author and co-editor of 30 books and manuals, including The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press), Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (USIP Press), The Little Book of Conflict Transformation (Skyhorse Publishing), and The Pocket Guide for Facing Down a Civil War: Surprising ideas from everyday people who shifted the cycles of violence (self-published).

Learn more about John Paul Lederach and his contributions to the fields of peacebuilding and conflict transformation by visiting: www.johnpaullederach.com.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Roundtable Breakfasts are online meetings via Zoom. The link will change each month and will be distributed to all registrants the day before and the morning of the event. All listed times for ACR-GNY events are for Eastern Time. 8:00 am – 8:30 am | Join call to network with attendees 8:30 am – 10:00 am | Presentation and Discussion About the Roundtable Breakfasts The Roundtable Breakfasts are organized by ACR-GNY and the CUNY Dispute Resolution Center at John Jay College. They take place the first Thursday of the month and are ongoing since 2001. Views expressed in connection with any Roundtable event publicity or at sessions are those of the speakers and participants and not of the CUNY DRC or ACR-GNY. This program is supported by ACR-GNY's 365 Sponsor: