LaDotta has one mission:
to help YOU become learned and a visionary of peace — able to confront narratives of violence and present alternatives!
LaDotta offers courses designed for you who are new to the idea of thinking about peace as a political choice. We also offer more advanced courses to students, journalists, analysts, diplomats and seasoned researchers who have realised that their knowledge about peace as a political idea has been seriously circumscribed by war theories and who seek more depth, and alternatives to peace as hopelessly idealistic, or yet another tool of unidirectionality.
Masterclasses a LaDotta cover knowledge blind-spots, as well as Masterclasses on-demand.
For those who find themselves in a challenging situation and need just a few sessions to solve a problem, need advise or a brain storm, LaDotta Coaching might be an alternative, while for more long-term situations LaDotta Mentorship might be a better choice.
LaDotta Community lets you access all of the above and more!
LaDotta offers
- Hands-on Courses
- Academic Level courses
- Masterclasses
- Coaching
- A Mentorship Programme
- A Pro-Peace Community
LaDotta Peace Academy
I am convinced that war is un-necessary, and that cooperation trumps war. 30 years of research and teaching peace, development and international relations have confirmed that war is a choice not a given. LaDotta’s goal is to inspire and empower so that those who want to change the situation, and who decide to educate themselves to be able to engage for such change, can reach that goal.
LaDotta offers education to help you understand war & peace, and to challenge the narratives fuelling constant conflict. It offers coaching to you, who like so many others feel a pressing need to offload and talk to disentangle the knots, or who need to discuss or develop ideas. It also offers a community of others who share your worries and hopes, a space to meet, share and develop.
My credentials? I have three decades of experience in teaching Peace & Conflict Studies, International Relations and Development Studies at BA and MA levels, and was awarded the Students' Award for outstanding teaching in 2016. I have also acted as supervisor for all academic degrees including Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
My aim is to continue educating people who seek academic quality knowledge, but who are not in university or whose university does not offer the knowledge I provide.
MY APPROACH
I want to help you become the change for peace you want to happen
La Dotta means 'the learned' — it is an invitation!
LaDotta Peace Academy is founded on the conviction that knowing things of importance should not only be for those especially educated. When you and I become people of knowledge, or even learned, on issues of fundamental importance to our survival, such as peace, we also develop our abilities to be change agents even if only in our local communities — we become the change we want to happen.
Peace studies are difficult to come by — it is taught in very few places. I was a university professor for three decades, specialising in peace and development studies, teaching generations of people, young and old, who for different reasons wanted to change the world, in big ways and in small.
With time, the urgency of change — or a transformation even — of how we relate to each other has increased. The crises and challenges we are faced with are too big to leave exclusively to those who want, and can, choose a university education. Every one of us who have the time and the wish to educate for the sake of becoming learned for change should have access to the fundamentals and even finer details of what a university education in peace studies offers.
The possibilities we have for contributing positively to the major changes that are not only under way, but already manifest are huge, but also quite dependent on us understanding the processes and being able to see where we are needed; in civil society, among the political elite, as journalists, analysts, reporters and writers, as diplomats or just plainly as ourselves, you and me in our local communities helping others understand and see the opportunities for making our world a better place for all. Change through knowledge and engagement, one person at the time.
How LaDotta can help you
Courses & Masterclasses
LaDotta offers hands-on and know-how courses, as well as basic and advanced academic quality courses in peace studies, including peace journalism, peace theory, theories of violence and more.
Coaching & Mentorship
For you who need just one or a few session to get set up to face new challenges as a peace maker in any sense of the word, or a longterm commitment for change.
Community
A community of peace builders, from YOU in your private capacity with a dream of no more war, to you who are a professional with an interest in peace in a wider sense. A community offering networking, resources and knowledge.
Courses & masterclasses
Frustrated by the lack of attention to peaceful solutions to conflicts?
Feel you don't have the knowledge to counter arguments for continued war and aggression?
Angry at being pushed aside as a 'romantic' or 'idealist'?
Supervisors or bosses tell you to 'get real'?
So many are distressed and frustrated about the forever wars we are constantly embroiled in. The feeling of overwhelm, and inability to challenge war narratives and politics of violence threatens to pacify citizenries where such practices are common.
ONE way of getting out of this negative loop is to start with ourselves, and the decision to become the change we want to be manifest. LaDotta offers some of the tools necessary to start doing just that — through self-development.
The courses and masterclasses are tailored to be accessible to anyone. While some are more general, others are specifically adapted to journalists, independent analysts or activists but still interesting to a general public.
LaDotta offers courses and masterclasses to anyone who wants to become knowers or change agents in their own right and at their own pace. You do not need to be a member of LaDotta community to take the courses or the masterclasses, but as a member, you have free access to them.
Coaching & Mentorship
Peace is not just theoretical or a matter of high politics — it can also be a life choice. Whether you are looking for just a little push or a transformation of perspective, coaching or mentorship might be your best place to start.
If you need advise or a shoulder to lean on in your professional life as a peace agent, or for small or more profound changes towards a life more in line with your ideal a few coaching sessions of a mentorship programme might be exactly what you need.
LaDotta offers coaching sessions for professionals, students, activists or others who are involved with processes of change from violence to peace, and who need a little help in solving a problem, who seek confirmation in action, or need a push to start a process of rethinking, challenging their own convictions or those of others.
LaDotta Mentorship programme is a more longterm solution for you, who wish to have someone to lean on to discuss life or career choices, not in a general sense but in relation to trying to make a shift away from life and career choices involving violence, to a becoming more aligned with grounded and well-founded, peace oriented choices.
You do not need to be a member of LaDotta Community to book a coaching session, or start a mentorship programme, but with a membership you get access to many more resources.
LaDotta Community
Access our peace library, masterclasses, live sessions, courses and much more through LaDotta Community membership.
The Community is envisaged as a virtual safe-space to meet, listen to others, and talk about peace among like-minded, even if not necessarily always in full agreement on the routes, strategies or tactics to reach the end-goal of peace in this world. Peace as a political idea is difficult to come by today, whether you are an activist, a concerned citizen, student, seasoned researcher or journalist. LaDotta Community is the space where we can all meet, as we used to do before the age of internet, to chat, develop ideas and educate ourselves.
LaDotta Community offers a range of resources, including a text and video link library for immediate access to knowledge; short-term coaching; weekly live discussions of current events; long term mentorship programmes; participation in interviews and Q&A when new courses and masterclasses are recorded; gifting knowledge; and printable guides, posters and more.
Basic Peace Theory from Kant to the Unipolar Moment and beyond
Sign up for the basic course in peace theory! The course will answer questions about the differences between liberal and new peace theory, give you tools to rethink peace as a political idea — and courage to challenge the violence and war narratives we are fed every day.
WAR, consists not in battle only, or in the act of fighting; but in the tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time, is to be considered in the nature of war; as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather, lies not in a shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war, consists not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.
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A LAW OF NATURE, (lex naturalis,) is a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or takes away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which he thinks it may be best preserved. […] consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason, that every man, ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule, contains the first, and fundamental law of nature; which is, to seek peace, and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature; which is, by all means we can, to defend ourselves. From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace [hence following the law in a commonwealth], is derived this second law; that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far-forth, as for peace, and defiance of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contended with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself. For as long as every man holds this right, of doing any thing he likes; so long are all men in the condition of war.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Book 1, Chapter 13, §8 and 14, §3-5)
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