Pedagogies of place and peace: Experiential and reflexive learning in post-conflict context

Rather than regarding the learning contexts as mere physical or virtual structures in which learning takes place, this paper promotes the idea of learning contexts as being inseparable from content itself-as how and where we learn very much influences what and why we learn. By purposely making our students to be aware of the contexts where learning activities are conducted and encouraging them to explore and challenge the entrenched dichotomies of different spaces and places-such as public vs. private, formal vs. informal, domestic vs. foreign, outdoor vs. indoor and online vs. on-site-as educators, we can refocus to and maximise the benefits of the social, experiential and emotional dimensions of learning and teaching. Such approach might even challenge the traditional understandings of knowledge production, seen as taking place in isolation within the walls of universities or labs and then subsequently transferred to community and industry. The paper discusses the ways knowledge production and transfer can also work other way around, how academia/universities could-and should-learn from community, i.e. in a real and lived social environment. It also aims to emphasise, and practically demonstrate, that we do not teach 'value neutral' skills, that ethics remain at the core of every pedagogical approach and should underpin every discipline, expert knowledge and skill. The paper draws on a decade of leading international student groups through the experiences of visiting post-genocide regions in eastern Bosnia. Through learning from local people and their environments, students could glean a sense of the intensity of local relationships to place and rethink how these 'remote' locales can act as an alter axis mundi in students' lives and relationships to dominant metropolitan knowledges. In exchange, local hosts have opportunities to educate and reorient students in such a way that their expert knowledges can be acknowledged and affirmed.