Scholarship and Biography
As director of the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts, Cynthia Cohen leads action/reflection research projects and writes and teaches about work at the nexus of the arts, culture, justice and peace. She directed the Brandeis University/Theatre Without Borders collaboration Acting Together, co-edited the "Acting Together on the World Stage" anthology and co-created the related documentary and toolkit. She directs ReCAST Inc., a nonprofit organization partnering with Brandeis and New Village Press on the dissemination of Acting Together resources.
Cohen has written extensively on the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of peacebuilding, including the chapters "Creative Approaches to Reconciliation" and "Engaging With the Arts to Promote Coexistence," and an online book "Working With Integrity: A Guidebook for Peacebuilders Asking Ethical Questions."
Cohen previously directed the international fellowship program Recasting Reconciliation Through Culture and the Arts, which produced an anthology by that name (available at the virtual resource library.) She teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Cohen was the founding director of the Oral History Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has facilitated coexistence efforts involving participants from the Middle East, the United States, Central America and Sri Lanka.
In addition, Cohen has worked as a dialogue facilitator with communities in the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Central America and the United States. Prior to her tenure at Brandeis, she directed a community-based, antiracist oral history center in the Boston area.
She holds a master's in city planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in education from the University of New Hampshire.