Following the success of the 2014 and the 2015 International Summer Schools in Peace and Conflict Studies, the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cyprus, announces the Third International Summer School, which is organized in collaboration with the European Consortium for Political Research, the International Association for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The 2016 focus theme will be "State Sovereignty and Conflicted Commons: Violence, Displacement, Cohabitation" and will take place in the capital of Cyprus, Nicosia between 10-22 July 2016. The purpose of the Summer School is to bring together leading academics in the interdisciplinary field of Peace and Conflict Studies with practitioners and students who are working in this area from varied disciplines, locations, and orientations.

The focus of the Summer School are questions around the commons, with the commons being understood to concern not just the status of areas and resources where claims to sovereignty and exclusivity are denied or constricted but also the presence and future of communities and life worlds that are established around them. It underscores the complex entanglements – harmonious and/or conflictive – between spaces, resources, and human and non-human existence. Thereby, issues concerning the legitimacy of appropriating commons, the negotiation of institutions regulating their use, their securitisation and ownership, their entanglement with state sovereignty or world heritage, their legitimation of displacement or cohabitation, will be comprehensively studied.

The Summer School seeks to attract reflective research students (primarily intended for MAs or PhDs), preferably with field experience, working on a broad range of issues pertaining to conflict and peacebuilding. The aim is to broaden rather than restrict input and to bring together individuals with different disciplinary backgrounds and professional experiences.