Dialogues bridging academic research with policy implications for contemporary peacebuilding challenges in Colombia

Inaugural Seminar

Book Launch: ‘Peace and Rural Development in Colombia: The Window for Distributive Change in Negotiated Transitions’ (Routledge, 2020), by Andrés García Trujillo

In this new series of Embrace Dialogue Academia Seminars (EDAS), co-hosted by Embrace Dialogue and Merton College, University of Oxford, we bring together presentations of finished academic research with discussions to draw out the implications of this work for the current challenges of peacebuilding in Colombia.

Author: Dr. Andrés García Trujillo, Research Associate, Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT); Lecturer in Economics, Universidad Externado de Colombia; & former advisor to the Colombian government on the peace process

Discussant: Prof. Nazih Richani, Associate Professor and Director of Latin American Studies, Political Science Department, Kean University

Convener: Dr. Gwen Burnyeat, Junior Research Fellow in Anthropology at Merton College (University of Oxford) & member of Embrace Dialogue

About the Book:

In Peace and Rural Development in Colombia Andrés García Trujillo investigates whether peace agreements geared toward terminating internal armed conflicts trigger rural distributive changes.

Combining academic rigor with an insider’s perspective, García Trujillo shows that the peace agreement in Colombia opened an exceptional window for addressing rural inequality. Yet, despite some progress, he argues that the agreement’s leverage to stir change was severely constrained by opposing actors within and outside the government. García Trujillo later applies the framework developed for the Colombian case to explain key dynamics of other post-conflict societies that have dealt with agrarian issues under a transitional context, like El Salvador or South Africa.

The original theoretical framework and empirically rich analysis make Peace and Rural Development in Colombia an indispensable read for scholars and practitioners who wish to gain an understanding on the political economy of peacemaking, policy change, and rural development in Colombia and beyond.

For more information on the book, click here.