Iryna Lysenko ’03
Mykolaev, Ukraine/Fruitland, ID

Iryna Lysenko ’03, from Mykolaev, Ukraine, is currently working on a Master’s in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Marburg (Germany). Recently, she co-organized the international summer school “Socio-Economic Dimension of Conflict Resolution” that took place in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on August 20-26, 2012.

The event was organized by the Center for Conflict Studies (CCS) of the University of Marburg in collaboration with the Russian-Tajik Slavonic University in Dushanbe. The event was sponsored through the program “Conflict Prevention in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Moldova” of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Additional sponsorship was provided by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The summer school sought to introduce participants to socio-economic dimensions of conflicts and conflict resolution, acquaint them with basic qualitative methods of conflict analysis, and train them in different approaches to conflict resolution and in mediation. As her Dean’s assistant, Iryna Lysenko, FLEX’03, provided logistical and language support for the team of German professors teaching the course. She was the primary liaison between the University of Marburg and the hosting university and oversaw all administrative matters during the summer school. She has already been offered a contract with the University of Marburg to organize the next summer school at a Central Asian university still to be selected in the summer of 2013. The participants of the international summer school 2012 included Valentina Rudenko, FLEX’08, Meerim Baktybekova, FLEX’08, and Bakytbek Tokubek uulu, UGRAD’04 and current IREX Country Coordinator (all from Kyrgyzstan).