Unsettling Empathy: Working With Groups in Conflict

Based on over 30 years of facilitating groups in conflict nationally and internationally, Dr. Krondorfer will talk about the dynamics of such work and how to bring groups together: Germans and Jews; Palestinians and Israelis; Christians, Jews, and Muslims; ethnically diverse students; Bedouins and indigenous people. This presentation is about responsibility: What it takes to become responsible toward each other, how we might approach such a task, and why embracing a relational practice of care releases us from the restraints of our enclaves of sameness.

Björn Krondorfer is Director of the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University and Professor of Religious Studies. His scholarship focuses on reconciliation, gender, and religion. Dr. Krondorfer has presented and facilitated seminars in Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Israel & Palestine, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, Netherlands, UK, and the US. Publications include “Reconciliation in Global Context”; “Male Confessions: Intimate Revelations and the Religious Imagination”; “Men and Masculinities in Christianity and Judaism”; “Remembrance and Reconciliation.” He created & curated exhibits on the Jewish Ghetto in Bedzin; the Berlin Wall; “Wounded Landscapes”; and “Echoes of Loss: Artistic Responses to Trauma.”