VIP Lab Fellows Unravel Complex Causes of Violence and Inequality

More than a year in the making, researchers from around the world gathered on USD’s campus sharing new insights and visions of a more peaceful future.

Wednesday was indeed a special day. It was the first time the entire inaugural Violence, Inequality, and Peace (VIP) Lab Fellowship cohort gathered in person to share findings from months-long projects.

The fellowship was announced in February 2023 and made possible with the help of former Kroc School Visiting Scholar and now San Diego congresswoman, Rep. Sara Jacobs. She helped secure nearly $600,000 in government funding for the program, which is intended to investigate how inequalities can propagate further injustice and even violence and how to reverse those trends.

“There are problems we know how to solve and we just don’t have the political will to solve them, and then there’s the problems that even though we want to solve them, we don’t know how to,” Jacobs said Wednesday. “That’s why this research is so important, to help us policy makers understand what the real levers are that we can pull to address these issues.”

In January, a cohort of eight fellows was announced, each beginning work in different fields but driven by the same guiding principle – learning how we may foster peace and equality by learning more about our divisions.

Each fellow was selected with the intention of creating a diverse group – both in their backgrounds and professional experience and insight, VIP Lab Director Rachel Locke said. The VIP Lab recruited, for example, someone with a law enforcement background as well as someone who’d been directly impacted by the justice system. They wanted people with first-hand experience with the forms of violence and inequality that the VIP Lab is working to address.

Over two days this week, that vision was on display.

There were a number of themes the VIP Lab hoped to cover with the research projects, all tied the causes and effects of cycles of violence. At the event, fellows presented research on those topics, but from a wide-range of perspectives. 

One researched the impact of a growing industrial shrimp farming industry on fishing communities in Honduras. Another examined strategies to combat growing onramps to conspiracism and extremism in the U.S. Each fellow’s work delves into different aspects of our increasingly interconnected world, and attempts to provide a clearer picture about how that affects society and marginalized communities.

The research, Locke said, provides the peacebuilding field with valuable new insights.  

The work doesn’t stop here, though. As Kroc School Dean Darren Kew said Wednesday, the relationships forged through this fellowship will add to a growing network of peacebuilders who can draw upon each other’s work and expertise, helping to light a peaceful path forward for us all.