Sierra Leone Seminar

Catalog description

This program explores how, over twenty years after the end of a brutal civil war, Sierra Leone has been touted as a model of successful post-war liberal peace and neoliberal interventions in post-conflict reconstruction and development. We interrogate the role of international actors in rebuilding institutions of post-conflict governance including the education sector, the media, the security sector, civil society, and human rights. At the same time, the course will raise questions around the success narrative as we also examine the role of domestic actors in navigating 21st-century challenges, including contested elections in 2023, increasing ethno-regional polarization, a deadly mudslide, pandemic disease (the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and more recently, Covid-19), and stunted efforts to promote economic development. Through our travel in Sierra Leone, we examine the integral role that institutions in Sierra Leone play in ensuring the day-to-day stability of a post-conflict society, with an aim to understanding not only how a contentious past impacts how post-conflict societies function, but also to look into various social practices and initiatives of counteracting the negative effects of conflict through justice, economic development, good governance and education.