SEESOX Seminar Series

Abstract: This presentation will examine the role of diaspora groups in peace mediations in Cyprus. It will first present the history of the island’s diaspora and how it relates to the Cyprus conflict. The presentation will then explore diaspora attitudes towards the current reunification efforts focusing specifically on three core areas: demands for participation in a future referendum, the right of return and property compensations; and finally, the political/electoral rights of diaspora citizens in a reunited Cyprus. The presentation will investigate the demands of various diaspora groups in these issues and identify the implications of diaspora activism, both positive and negative, for a Cypriot settlement as well as highlight best practices internationally to accommodate such demands. While not always unproblematic, the presentation will conclude that the inclusion of diasporas and their views in a future peace settlement is essential due to their increasing interconnectedness, the evolution of international human rights law, and more importantly, the diaspora’s own potential for a constructive role in the Cyprus reunification efforts.

Neophytos Loizides joined the School in September 2011 and has been a Chair in International Conflict Analysis since October 2016. Dr. Loizides is the author of The Politics of Majority Nationalism: Framing Peace, Stalemates, and Crises published by Stanford University Press (2015) and Designing Peace: Cyprus and Institutional Innovations in Divided Societies published by the University of Pennsylvania Press (2016). He is also the co-editor (with Oded Haklai) of Settlers in Contested Lands: Territorial Disputes and Ethnic Conflicts and has authored more than thirty academic articles and book chapters in the areas of nationalism, forced displacement and conflict regulation in deeply divided societies including most recently work published in the European Journal of Political Research, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Comparative Politics and the Journal of Refugee Studies.

Dr Loizides received his PhD at the University of Toronto and held fellowships at the Belfer Centre at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Solomon Asch Centre at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his MA at the Central European University and a BA at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Kent, he has been a Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast, 2006-2011 and Princeton University, 2005-6. Dr Loizides is the Associate Editor of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics published by Taylor and Francis and sits in the editorial board of Contemporary Southeastern Europe and Federal Governance published by the Forum of Federations. He has been the recipient of the 2016 Faculty of Social Sciences Research Prize at the University of Kent.

www.seesoxdiaspora.org