Whose Peace Are We Building? 

By: Alexa Lewandowski, William and Mary

Hi, my name is Alexa Lewandowski. I just finished my third (junior) year in Scotland, pursuing  a joint degree in International Relations from the College of William & Mary and the University  of St Andrews. I am especially interested in peace and conflict studies and hope to work in  conflict management and international development. I love to read, be in nature, meet new  people, and travel, and could not be more excited to experience life in a new city surrounded by diverse cultures this summer. 

While researching post-conflict peacebuilding in Uganda last year, I became interested in the  potential of transitional justice and its somewhat contradictory results. Transitional justice refers  to the mechanisms used to address legacies of mass violence, repression, or conflict, helping  societies pursue accountability, reconciliation, and peace through both international and local  collaboration. In Uganda, the implementation of transitional justice was branded as an  international success, yet local realities were faced with ritual reinvention and cultural erasure. 

This piqued my curiosity in how global institutions represent, reshape, or neglect “the local.” In  post-conflict settings, international organizations often emphasize community participation and  culturally rooted justice. However, Uganda showed me how local involvement can sometimes  become more performative than substantive. Communities may be consulted without being given  real decision-making power, or cultural practices may be used symbolically without respecting  their deeper meaning. Through my project, I hope to better understand how transitional justice  can avoid these risks while still benefiting from international support. 

This summer in London, I will develop a comparative case study of transitional justice  mechanisms across Uganda, South Africa, Sierra Leone, and Sri Lanka, examining when  transitional justice succeeds, when it fails or becomes counterproductive, and how the field  might be refined to ensure that intervention produces more just and effective outcomes than 

noninvolvement. London gives me unique hands-on access to institutions, archives, NGOs,  peace agreements, and policy networks that shape international approaches to transitional justice. I plan to analyze these resources to identify patterns in local legitimacy, substantive justice  outcomes, broad participation, and the non-instrumental use of cultural practices. Furthermore, I  aim to put forward practical criteria that NGOs, donors, peacebuilding organizations, and local  institutions can use when designing or supporting post-conflict justice mechanisms that are both  contextually grounded and structurally effective. 

I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to pursue this project, move beyond secondary source research, and translate my findings into practical recommendations. This project gives me  the chance to develop both as a researcher and as someone hoping to contribute to ethical and  effective peacebuilding work. I look forward to diving into how communities rebuild after  violence, how international institutions can better support that process, and how justice  mechanisms can be designed to center local communities rather than speak for them. 

Stay tuned for updates from London!