Faculty/Staff Directory

Paula Ditzel Facci

POSITION: Assistant Professor of Peacebuilding; Academic Program Director - Center for Justice & Peacebuilding

DEPARTMENT: Center for Justice & Peacebuilding

LOCATION: Main Campus, Harrisonburg | RLN 208

Paula Ditzel Facci is a dancing peace researcher and facilitator of creative approaches for conflict transformation. She is fascinated by that sense of awe which sparks curiosity of science, art, and spirituality, and moved by the pulse of social justice. Research, teaching, theory and practice are intrinsically intertwined for her. She defines her learning journey as cultivating embodied awareness, compassionate balancing, and harnessing energy to unfold in peaces and life-serving transformation. The intersections of her research interests, combining arts and creativity, peacebuilding, gender, education and conflict transformation offer a unique and original lens to peace, justice and conflict transformation.

Ditzel Facci serves as Assistant Professor of Peacebuilding at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, ��ݮ��. She obtained her PhD in Peace, Conflict and Development from Universidad Jaume I. She was a Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and previously taught at the University of Innsbruck and in institutes in Brazil and Germany. Paula also worked for five years with social projects and popular education in Brazil and Latin America.

Her publications include the books Dancing Conflicts, Unfolding Peaces (2020) and On Human Potential: Peace and Conflict Transformation Fostered Through Dance (2011), and the chapters “Creative Approaches to Peacebuilding in Brazil” (2024) and “Decolonial Possibilities in arts and peacebuilding” (2025). She published a Practitioner’s Toolkit: Gender in Peace and Conflict (2020), and co-edited the special issue “Transrational Perspectives in Peace Education”, of the Journal of Peace Education (2019). Recently, she was featured in the Peace Policy Issue with the essay “Dancestorming Decolonial Possibilities in Peacebuilding” and in the podcast Peace Policy Spotlight: The Power of Art in Peacebuilding. She also co-choreographed and performed at “The world has changed”, an interdisciplinary composition based on the poetry of Alice Walker with music by Zachary Wadsworth premiered at EMU’s Music Gala 2023.

She authored chapters in culture of peace for educators and youth and worked as a consultant in Reports on Human Rights Education of the InterAmerican Institute of Human Rights, Costa Rica. Previously, Paula worked for five years with social and educational projects in Brazil, her native country. When not teaching, you can find Paula dancing, eating, laughing with family and friends, and hiking in the mountains.

Education

PHD, Jaume I University (Peace, Conflict and Development)
MA, University of Innsbruck
BA, SaoPaulo State University

Publications
Ditzel Facci, P. (2025) Decolonial possibilities in arts and peacebuilding. In Tim Seidel, Maia Carter Hallward, Ji Eun Kim, Cécile Mouly, and Zubairu Wai. . London: SAGE
The Kroc Cast (2025) Peace Policy Spotlight: The Power of Art in Peacebuilding.
Ditzel Facci, Paula (January 2025) Dancestorming Decolonial Possibilities in Peacebuilding. In Peace Policy, Kroc Institute for International Peacebuilding, Notre Dame University. Norbert Koppensteiner (Ed.).
Ditzel Facci, P. (2022) As artes e seus papéis na transformação de conflitos no contexto das migrações. In Sanches Rocha, Elizabeth (Ed.) Cultura como facilitadora na integração de pessoas em situação de refúgio. Cadernos da Cátedra III. São Paulo: Centro Brasileiro de Estudos da América Latina – CBEAL, Fundação Memorial da América Latina.
[book review] Dancing Through the Dissonance: Creative Movement and Peacebuilding, by Lesley Pruitt and Erica Rose Jeffrey. (2021) Peace & Change, 46: 105-108. https://doi.org/10.1111/pech.12442
Ditzel Facci, P. (2020) . Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48838-3
Ditzel Facci, P. (2020) Practitioner’s Toolkit: Gender in Peace and Conflict. Academy for Conflict Transformation
Tjersland, H. & Ditzel Facci, P. (2019) Introduction: Unfolding transrational potential, Journal of Peace Education, 16:3, 247-251, DOI: 10.1080/17400201.2019.1697070
Tjersland, H. & Ditzel Facci, P. (2019) (Eds.) , Special Issue, Journal of Peace Education
Ditzel Facci, P. (2018) On Crossroads: Learnings from Modernity, Feminisms, and Transrational Peace. Online Symposium Decolonizing Narratives, Denaturalizing Modernity. Contending Modernities.
[book review] Transrational Resonances: Echoes to the Many Peaces, by Josefina Echavarría Alvarez, Daniela Ingruber, Norbert Koppensteiner (Eds.). (2018) Peace Review, 30:3, 410-413, DOI: 10.1080/10402659.2018.1497005
Ditzel Facci, P. (2016) “Cultura de Paz”, In Cultura de paz, gênero e prevenção do abuso de drogas. Caderno do estudante e Caderno do professor. São Paulo: Faith and Joy Foundation.
Ditzel Facci, P. (2011) . Master of Peaces series, UNESCO Chair of Peace Studies. Munich: LIT
Scholarly Presentations and Abstracts
Elicitive approaches to peace and reconciliation. Panel Co-organized with Josefina Echavarria Alvarez. Building Sustainable Peace: Ideas, Evidence, Strategies, The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Notre Dame, USA (Nov 8-10, 2019)

Art and Practices of Peace in Latin America. Panel Co-organized with Natalia Lozano. 54th International Congress of Americanists “Building Dialogues in the Americas” University of Vienna, Austria (July 15-20, 2012)

Muitas Pazes: uma aproximação às interpretações de paz no Brasil por meio do samba. XI Congreso del Consejo Latinoamericano de Investigación para la Paz, Brazil (Sep 18-20, 2019)

Turning Oneself Inside Out: Transrational Methodologies and Qualitative Inquiry in Peace Education. International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (May 15-18, 2019)

Investigating Patterns of Violence: Movement and Conflict Transformation. Center on Culture and Violent Conflict Peace Research Institute Oslo – PRIO, Norway (Aug 27-29, 2018)

La Auto etnografía y la Escrita Encarnada como Métodos de Investigación en Paz. 56º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas (ICA) University of Salamanca, Spain (Jul 15-20, 2018)

Dancing Conflicts: Movement as Method to Elicit Conflict Transformation (poster). Mind and Life Summer Research Institute, Garrison NY (Jun 2-8, 2018)

Dancing Conflicts: Embodied Writings from a Female Body. Theorizing Linkages, Practicing Solidarity: Feminist Approaches to CR. School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, VA (Apr 6-7, 2017)

Exploring Transrational Peace in Practice: Dialogues on Culture of Peace in Brazil. Innsbruck Academic Festival of Many Peaces, University of Innsbruck, Austria (Aug 9-14, 2015)

International Movements and Social Actors: shaping new international scenarios. III National Meeting of the Brazilian Association of International Relations. International Relations Institute of the University of São Paulo, Brazil (Jul 20-22, 2011)
Other Presentations
“The world has changed”, an interdisciplinary composition based on the poetry of Alice Walker with music by Zachary Wadsworth premiered at EMU’s Music Gala 2023.

Transformação de Conflitos. Brazilian Personalized and Precision Medicine Association, Brazil (Live) (Aug 14, 2021).

Mesa Temática 6: Arte e Construção de Paz (Arts and Peacebuilding) XII Congreso Latinoamericano de Investigación para la Paz, Honduras - Online (Aug 4, 2021 ).

Dançando Conflitos, Desdobrando Pazes (Dancing Conflicts, Unfolding Peaces) Brasília University – UNB, Brazil (Online) (Dec 8, 2020).

Dancing Conflicts, Unfolding Peaces: Movement for Conflict Transformation. The Embodiment Conference, UK (Online) (Oct 15, 2020).

New Emerging Trends in Peace Studies. International Webinar, Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar, India (Online) (Sep 21, 2020).

O potencial da arte para a paz e a transformação de conflitos (Arts potential for peace) Graduate Program in International Relations, Paraíba State University, Brazil - Online (Sep 14, 2020).

Paz em Movimento: Arte e Transformação de Conflitos (Peace in Movement). Brazilian Conference on Peace Studies, Brazil (Nov 7-9, 2018).

Dancing conflicts: an embodied approach to transformation and peace. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Notre Dame, USA (Oct 31, 2017).
Courses Taught
PAX 533 Analysis: Understanding Conflict (co-taught with Gloria Rhodes)

PAX 532 Formation for Peacebuilding Practice (co-taught with Gloria Rhodes)

PAX 601 Mediation and Negotiation (co-taught with Shanon Alabanza)

PAX 568 Transformational Leadership (co-taught with Matt Tibbles)

PAX 535 Research Methods for Social Change

PAX 585 Global Development

PAX 635 Global Challenges, Local Struggles, Transnational Solidarities

PAX 635 Global Challenges, Local Struggles, Transnational Solidarities (SPI)

PAX 691 Creative Approaches to Peacebuilding

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