This research group examines alternative personal transformative practices—including plant medicines, meditation, and indigenous healing traditions—and their role in peacebuilding and social transformation across the Global South, with particular focus on Africa and Latin America. We investigate three interconnected dimensions:

1. how indigenous communities (such as Yoruba Babaaláwo practices in Africa and Ayahuasca traditions in Brazil) maintain and transmit peace-oriented knowledge systems;
2. the impacts of Western appropriation and the "psychedelic renaissance" on these communities; and
3. pedagogical questions around how these practices are represented (or excluded) in formal education versus sustained through intergenerational learning outside institutional structures.

While peacebuilding scholarship has traditionally focused on institutions, governance reforms, and elite negotiations, this group advances a complementary lens: how personal and communal transformation practices shape social cohesion, moral education, conflict resolution, and post-conflict healing.

Yet the study of peacebuilding and state-building in Africa and the Global South has traditionally been dominated by the liberal peacebuilding paradigm, which emphasises the establishment of Western-style democratic institutions and economic frameworks. Alternative practices, cantered on personal transformation, offer promising avenues for fostering sustainable peace and contributing to more inclusive and culturally resonant state-building efforts in Africa.

The group will initially focus empirically on Africa and Latin America, with comparative attention to: West Africa (e.g. Yoruba/Bàbáláwo traditions); Central and Southern Africa (e.g. Iboga and Bwiti practice in Gabon; Kanna herbs and Khoisan people’ in South Africa); Brazil, Costa Rica, and the Amazon basin (e.g. Ayahuasca traditions). A central concern is how these practices are being reshaped by the Western “psychedelic renaissance”—including medicalisation, commercialisation, neo-shamanism, and spiritual tourism—and the implications for indigenous communities, local economies, epistemologies, and peace-oriented knowledge systems.

Guiding areas of interest and research questions:

Indigenous Knowledge, Healing, and Peace: How do indigenous and local communities understand healing, moral repair, and social harmony? How do these communities maintain and transmit transformative peacebuilding practices across generations, and what pedagogical frameworks sustain these traditions outside formal education?

Co-option, Medicalisation, and Neo-Shamanism: How are indigenous practices reinterpreted within Western biomedical, therapeutic, and spiritual frameworks? In what ways does the Western "psychedelic renaissance" impact indigenous communities practicing plant medicine traditions—economically, culturally, and epistemologically?

Our members

Dr Barney Walsh, Senior Lecturer in Security, Leadership and Development, African Leadership Centre. Research interests: African Agency; Human Security in Africa; Africa in the Global Political Economy.

Dr Gloriana Rodriguez Alvarez, Lecturer in Leadership, Development, Peace and Security Education. Researcg interests: Followership/Leadership; Decolonial perspectives; Indigenous Epistemes

Chevon Whyte, PhD Researcher, African Leadership Centre, Chair of the Young Professionals at UN Association UK; PGR work on the psychology of the trauma of colonialism that influences the way people perceive the state and the postcolonial Guyana. Research interests and expertise: Peacebuilding, indigenous sovereignty, trauma-informed, and community-based approaches to healing and social repair.