Chaden Hani is a researcher in peace-building initiatives at the Institute of Middle East Studies in Lebanon and a doctoral candidate at the International Baptist Theological Studies Centre in Amsterdam (IBTS).
By Jacob Cook
If you hope to truly understand a conflict, to map its terrain and discover sites for healing or restoration, the most promising trailheads may be found in the stories and histories told by those who inhabit its land. Through her consistent labor to help her people in Lebanon narrate and heal from their civil war (1975–1990), Chaden Hani explores how marking and maintaining space for multiple narratives opens the possibility that peace with justice may, indeed, be found.
Even though her work is deeply informed by the academic study of historiography and transitional justice — she is, after all, pursuing her PhD — Chaden’s own research is deeply invested in the field. It is action research. This means she recognizes from the start how she belongs to this conflicted terrain. But more than that, it means her work to study whether a “multiple narratives” approach to competing accounts of history can unearth pathways toward peace carries the hope of enabling the real-world practice of that peace.
Chaden is a living example of what poet Antonio Machado advises, “Traveler, there is no path. You make the path by walking.”
—Jacob Cook is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Eastern Mennonite University and a senior research fellow at IBTS.
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In the following 2021 webinar, Chaden Hani offers a Lebanese perspective on the post-civil war period in her country.
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