Prof.in Dr.in Melanie Hussak
Melanie Hussak is a Professor of Peace Studies with a focus on Peace Education at the Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Freiburg. She serves as the Academic and Managing Director of the Peace Institute Freiburg and as Director of the Freiburg Institute for Human Rights Education.
Previously, she was a Research Fellow at the Peace Institute and a Research Associate on the project “Developing a Shared Society Index” at the University of Haifa. She was a Research Fellow at the Peace Academy Rhineland-Palatinate at RPTU. Melanie Hussak completed her PhD at RPTU with a dissertation entitled “Peace Concepts and Initiatives of the D/Lakota in Dealing with Colonization and Ongoing Coloniality: A Contribution to the Decolonization of Peace and Conflict Studies.”
In addition to her academic work, she has gained extensive practical experience in peace education and conflict transformation through collaborations with NGOs, communities, peace practitioners, schools, and youth groups across several European countries.
Research Focus
- Theories and Methods of Peace Education
- Peace and Conflict in the Context of Societal and Socio-Ecological Transformation Processes
- Human Rights Education
- Peace Studies and De/coloniality
Alexandra Dick
Alexandra Dick is a Research Fellow at the Peace Institute Freiburg. She previously worked at the research groups “Holy Scriptures, Peace and War” at the University of Tübingen, where she analyzed the role of religion in peace and conflict processes in West Africa and carried out fieldwork in Côte d’Ivoire, and “Jihadism on the Internet” at the University of Mainz, where she focused on religiously framed extremism. She was a visiting researcher at the City College of New York and a research assistant at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Alexandra Dick holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Islamic Studies from the University of Tübingen and an MA in Social Anthropology of Development from SOAS, University of London, and is currently a PhD candidate in Islamic Studies at the University of Bochum.
She gained practical experience in Togo, India and Estonia, and regularly conducts workshops on global learning and intercultural competence.
Research Focus
- Religion, peace and conflict
- Religiopolitical movements
- Radicalization and extremism
- Religious media practices and pop culture