Publications

Selected publications

Before my clinical work, I spent many years as a researcher, including at Georgetown University and the United Nations University, studying identity, conflict, and how people and nations position themselves in relation to one another. These are some of the pieces closest to my heart.

Books and book chapters

Promoting Conflict or Peace through Identity

Edited volume. Ashgate, 2008; now published by Taylor & Francis. How the stories we tell about who we are can drive groups apart or bring them together. Digital edition on VitalSource.

My chapters in the book:

• Introduction: Borders of the Mind

• The Positioning Diamond: Conceptualizing Identity Constructions at the US-Mexico Border

• Crossing Mental Borders: Constructing a Laissez-Passer for Peace

Discursive Production of Conflict in Rwanda

In Global Conflict Resolution Through Positioning Analysis. Springer, 2008. How public language positioned groups against one another, and what that can teach us about prevention.

Participatory Foresight Techniques Applied to Regional Integration Processes

With Luk Van Langenhove. In The Regional Integration Manual (GARNET). Routledge, 2011. How participatory and foresight methods can help people across a region imagine, and shape, a shared future.

Participatory Methods Toolkit: A Practitioner's Manual

King Baudouin Foundation and viWTA, 2003; expanded second edition, 2005. A practical guide to methods that bring citizens, experts and policymakers into real dialogue. Free to download (2005 edition).

Journal articles

The Positioning Diamond: A Trans-disciplinary Framework for Discourse Analysis

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2010. A framework I developed for seeing how people claim identities, rights and duties in the way they speak, and how that shapes what feels possible between them.

Relational Constructionism: Generative Theory and Practice for Conflict Engagement and Resolution

International Journal of Conflict Engagement and Resolution, 2013. On approaching conflict as something people create together, and can therefore transform together.

Identity Construction in Europe: A Discursive Approach

Identity, 2010. How a European identity is built, and contested, in everyday political language.

Disputes as Complex Social Events: On the Uses of Positioning Theory

With Rom Harré. Common Knowledge, 2003. How positioning theory lets us see a dispute as a layered social event, and why that opens new ways of resolving it.

You'll find a fuller list of my publications in my CV and on my LinkedIn profile.