Imagine you are a university lecturer, teaching courses in negotiation and mediation. Imagine you are also teaching a course in legal English for non-native speakers, which closely shadows a course in English private law, taught by a professor of law. One of the things you do in the latter class is support the students in…
I have given a little thought as to whether my work as a mediator fits into one of the well-known “styles.” I do not see myself as an evaluative or directive mediator, but I do sometimes tell clients how I see their options. I would say I am a facilitative mediator, but as perhaps most…
Morton Deutsch, the great social psychologist of common sense, explained the difference between competition and cooperation thus: “if you’re positively linked with another, then you sink or swim together; with negative linkage, if the other sinks, you swim, and if the other swims, you sink.”[1]Cooperation and Competition. In M. Deutsch, P. T. Coleman, & E….
I have just read Ian Macduff’s recent Kluwer blog (26 November: “Upheaval and resilience: a note from the Shaky Isles”). What a privilege it is, in this blog, to follow Ian’s erudite writing. He captures so well the spirit of the age, with all its uncertainty, tragedy, hope and opportunity. On that theme, my wife…
During the first week of October this year we were privileged to be part of a group of people exploring conflict resolution tools in youth and volunteer work. A recent blog on this topic was posted here by Virginia Vilches Such, who was involved in a similar project. We would like to echo her thoughts…
I have recently had the opportunity to conduct a number of training workshops in both Negotiation and Mediation at both the University as well as for corporate clients. One of the benefits of doing this and working with other talented trainers is that it often sparks ideas as to how training can be made more…
In March 2014, Sabine Walsh blogged here on the proposed regulation for mediator certification in Germany. This has finally been published by the German Ministry of Justice, on 21 August 2016. The regulation will come into force on 1 September 2017. It was first promised in Germany’s mediation law in 2012, itself made necessary by…
Change, transformation, and peace. These are some of the words that the participants of the project “Mediation: a new tool for dealing with conflicts In Youth Work” stated when we asked them to define their experience during that week. “Mediation: a new tool for dealing with conflicts In Youth Work” was a combined Training Course…
This post will be the first of a series focusing on individual aspects of regulatory robustness, as introduced in previous blogs by Nadja Alexander and applied in the context of Ireland by the two of us in our last post. With so many areas to focus on, it was difficult to choose one to begin…
I have in previous entries (July 2012, July 2013 and November 2015) written about a peer mediation initiative called the Peacemakers’ Conference. The purpose of the Peacemakers’ Conference is to teach 13-16 year olds how to resolve conflicts amicably in a workshop cum competition format. This year’s Peacemakers’ Conference was held from 22 to 24…
