Johanna Mannergren
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Johanna Mannergren is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Södertörn University, Sweden. She holds a PhD in Peace and Development Research from the School of Global Studies at University of Gothenburg. Her research concerns peace processes with a focus on reconciliation, politics of memory, everyday peace, transitional justice and gendered experiences of war, and some of her more recent work has investigated women’s testimonies about war, museums as sites for everyday memory practices, gender gaps in transitional justice, and the role of silence in transitional justice processes. She has conducted fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Jerusalem and Brussels and takes an interest in the encounter between international interventions and local practices and discourses. Previously, she has been a guest researcher at University of Louvain in Belgium.
Johanna Mannergren joins the Paris IAS in March 2026 for a one-month writing residency.
Research topics
Peace and conflict research; peacebuilding; reconciliation; memory politics; transitional justice; gender.
Reconciliation Acts. Towards a new theory of reconciliation in the wake of violence.
In a world marked by polarisation, war, and everyday violence, the research paper asks what reconciliation means and why it still matters. Although reconciliation as a concept is widely invoked in transitional justice and peacebuilding, it is often criticised as empty, symbolic, or even harmful— used to mask injustice, ignore victims’ experiences, or legitimise state violence and colonial legacies. Yet such critiques overlook that communities and societies do sometimes achieve meaningful transformation and overcome deep divisions.
The research paper proposes a new theory centered on reconciliation acts—the concrete, felt, and transformative practices through which people rebuild relationships after violence. It introduces a multi-level framework that addresses blind spots in current scholarship. First, it links reconciliation to acts of accountability and acknowledgement rather than vague, endless processes. Second, it examines reconciliation acts across scales: from everyday interpersonal encounters to national, regional, and global initiatives. Third, it highlights the agency of those involved, showing how unexpected acts can open pathways to political and social transformation, while also recognizing the ever-present possibility of non-reconciliation.
Through this rethinking, reconciliation emerges as a force that can reshape political and economic structures, mobilize moral imagination, and draw on the transformative power of ordinary people. The framework is grounded in extensive ethnographic research in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Israel, Belgium, and South Africa.
Key publications
Björkdahl A, Höglund K and Mannergren J. "Troubling Testimonies. Women’s Narratives of War". New York University Press, 2026.
Mannergren J, Björkdahl A, S Buckley-Zistel, S Kappler, T Williams. "Peace and the Politics of Memory". Manchester University Press, 2024.
Mannergren J. "The Politics of Reconciliation and Memory". In ed Mälksöö M Handbook on the Politics of Memory. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.
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