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PROFESSOR ALAIN TSCHUDIN’S 100 DAYS IN OFFICE AS THE PROFESSOR OF PEACE STUDIES AND DIRECTOR OF ICON AT DUT

PROFESSOR ALAIN TSCHUDIN’S 100 DAYS IN OFFICE AS THE PROFESSOR OF PEACE STUDIES AND DIRECTOR OF ICON AT DUT

The newly appointed Professor of Peace Studies and Director of International Centre of Nonviolence (ICON) at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), Professor Alain Tschudin shares his experience of his 100 days in office. He commenced his duties in June 2022 and feels it has been an interesting journey to date.

Joining the DUT community has been a blessing for Prof Tschudin as a former research associate of the university and also this opportunity has brought him back to his hometown, Durban. He revealed that his appointment was quite serendipitous, as he had spent such a great deal of time away from Durban and South Africa in his previous role.

“It came as a welcome surprise, enabling me to contribute to my hometown and province. It enabled my wife and I to remain in the place that we love, with our family and friends, and with the people who make this place so special,” explained Prof Tschudin.

Speaking briefly about duties, Prof Tschudin said he is responsible for ICON, which falls under the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement and the Faculty of Management Sciences. ICON offers general education modules to undergraduates, Master’s and Doctoral level research to graduate students. He excitedly shared that they recently had their Postgraduate Diploma in Peace Studies approved by the Council on Higher Education (CHE).

“We also have academic visitors and postdoctoral fellow and research associates working with us. Our emphasis is on transformational learning that will yield some positive change in the real world by promoting peace and nonviolence in practice. This is largely undertaken through action research and our innovative community, social and environmental engagement work,” he added.

The ICON Director is grateful to work with a diverse team and he is excited to be working in applied areas of importance such as Gender-Based Violence (GBV), Child and Youth Development, and links between Sustainability and Peace.

Sharing some of the challenges he encountered during his 100 days in office, having a small staff number relative to their student size, having the largest peace studies graduate programme on the African continent. They are hoping to gain more academic and administrative person-power. His other concern was that space is always limited in university settings, so they are reconfiguring their office and centre settings to best enable the work that they do.

“To this end, we are also partnering with the municipal Parks Department, to use the Durban Botanical Gardens for ICON activities, such as focus group discussions or settings for peace-related events. I recently went on a work trip abroad. We are intending on collaborating with several partners, including the Università per Stranieri di Perugia in Italy who are developing a short programme on Peace. Perugia is home to St Francis of Assisi and significant for peace activism. It is great to team up with aligned organisations to advance peace and nonviolence,” noted Prof Tschudin.

He hopes to build on the strong foundation already laid at ICON to ensure its continued integrity, through the promotion of a community of care and competence, and actively promoting lasting, positive peace.

“I would like to see us develop local capacity as well as being true to promoting our work globally, since we are named as the International Centre of Nonviolence. In this regard, the nurturing of partnerships locally within the city, our province and country, and beyond, internationally, and working in solidarity with others who share our values, will help us sustain what we do to build forward better,” said Prof Tschudin.

Briefly about Prof Tschudin:

• He comes from a multi-cultural family, with his mother hailing from a large Durban family, the Akals, while his father moved over from Switzerland in the late 1960s.
• He is married, a father to a rescue dog, loves people, creative arts, adventure travelling and the outdoors, and runs ultra-marathons (Comrades Marathon) to stay sane.
• Prof Tschudin attended the (then) University of Natal at Howard College campus to study Social Sciences, majoring in Law and Psychology before undertaking an Honours in Psychology. His Masters degree is on the evolution of brain-behaviour relationships and social complexity was upgraded to a Ph.D. in Psychology, completed overseas on a Commonwealth Scholarship at the University of Liverpool.
• He has been registered as a psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) for almost 25 years.
• He has lived and worked in various countries and contexts around the world, ranging from lecturing at several African and European universities to working for local and international NGOs and consulting for multilaterals.
• He completed a Swiss Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in Social Cognition at the University of Cambridge where he was a Research Associate of Corpus Christi College. He switched from Natural Sciences to the Faculty of Divinity, where he returned to studies, completing his Masters degree in Theology and Religious Studies before passing his doctoral thesis, without correction, in moral philosophy and theology, on the meaning of being and its ethical implications.
• He worked for the European Commission with immigrants and ethnic minorities in southern Spain before returning to South Africa to run the Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies at UKZN (2011-2014).
• He has served as a humanitarian with UNICEF in conflict settings including CAR in 2014 and Syria, 2015, coordinating the assessment on the status of children in the war. He has also been a lead consultant for Save the Children International on child migration.
• In 2019, in recognition of his work, Prof Tschudin was awarded a full professorship as a visiting professor in the WITS University School of Governance.
• Prior to DUT he served as SADC Executive Director for a Pan-African NGO from 2015-2020, also assuming responsibility for start-ups in Francophone West
• From 2020 he was lead consultant to the United Nations Special Advisor on Africa, on the nexus approach that links peace and security to development, human rights, humanitarian aid and governance, in relation to accelerating the Sustainable Development Goals across Africa.
• He was recently elected as President of the Association Montessori Internationale, an honorary role that oversees the work of the global organisation founded by Dr Maria Montessori herself in 1929.

Pictured: Prof Alain Tschudin

Simangele Zuma

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