Michális S. Michael

Dr Michális S. Michael is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe University and was Director of the Centre for Dialogue– Global Reconciliation. He has taught, published and researched extensively on political science, international relations, conflict resolution, foreign policy, and the theory and practice of dialogue. His work involves the careful study of intergroup and international conflict and their transformations away from narrow notions of state-bound security. By using various case-studies he investigates the conditions and circumstances in which disputants can alter their goals and perceptions of each other by exploring alternative modes of engagement to entrenched situations. Effectively, Dr Michael’s work seeks to deepen our understanding of the increasingly complex and often volatile social, political and cultural environments which conflict inhibits, and the corresponding pressures it places on both governance and civil society. By probing the need for dialogue in the conflictual setting, his research gauges the extent to which dialogue offers an effective form of communication that goes beyond traditional approaches of mediation and negotiation, and provides both governmental and non-governmental agencies with new possibilities for defusing polarisation and maximising the prospects for constructive engagement.