John Gledhill wins funding for project to explore use of music in UN peacebuilding
Congratulations to John Gledhill, who has been awarded funding for a new project to explore the use of music as a tool for peacebuilding by actors in the UN system.
The 2000-euro award was made by the Pau Casals Foundation and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) Pau Casals UNESCO Chair. Dr Gledhill’s project was one of two funded out of 26 applications.
To date, the ways in which UN actors – including the Secretariat, peacekeeping missions, UNESCO and the United Nations Development Programme – have used music for peace have not been systematically documented, analysed and categorised.
The new project, titled on ‘The Roles and Functions of Music in United Nations Peacebuilding’ aims to fill this gap by achieving two objectives:
- Identifying which UN actors have used music to support peace, and then documenting the various programmes they have carried out.
- Analysing all the projects identified in order to isolate the mechanisms through which UN-supported music programmes could facilitate peace. This analysis aims to create a classification system that can be used to categorise the different UN music for peace projects according to their contributions to peacebuilding.
This study of music for UN peacebuilding will be the first contribution to a broader, collaborative project that Dr Gledhill is planning, which will explore the political roles, functions, and impacts of music in the arc of conflict and peace.
John Gledhill is Associate Professor of Global Governance at ODID.