Biography:Gabrielle Rifkind
Gabrielle Rifkind | |
|---|---|
Gabrielle Rifkind | |
| Born | 1953 |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | University of Manchester University of Edinburgh University of London |
| Occupation | mediator, group analyst, psychotherapist |
| Known for | collaboration, conflict resolution |
Gabrielle Rifkind is a British mediator who has specialised in international conflict resolution working through non-governmental organisations, (NGOs) in the Middle East and United Kingdom. She is the Director of Oxford Process.[1] She is known as a commentator on international peacemaking and related themes and author of several titles.[2][3] Her work considers the role of human relationships[4] in managing parties with "radical disagreements"[5] with the goal of establishing areas of potential mutual self-interest.[6][7]
Early life
Rifkind is a graduate of the University of Manchester and the University of Edinburgh. After working for the Probation Service, she trained at the Institute of Group Analysis and became a group analyst and a psychotherapist.[8][9]
Later career
Rifkind joined the Oxford Research Group in the late 1990s to explore peacemaking in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[10] She became head of the Israel/Palestine programme. She next turned her attention to Iran and the wider Middle East.[11]
In 2016 she founded Oxford Process, which works in conflict situations to build relationships with conflicted parties to identify opportunities to reduce tensions or prevent further escalation of violence.[12] Rifkind's theory of conflict resolution focuses on the non-violent management of radical differences between groups, rather than searching for an elusive common ground.[13] Her work is currently focused on the Middle East and the war between Russia and Ukraine.[14]
Rifkind has frequently appeared on broadcast media in the UK has given public lectures on peacemaking and contributed to a colloquium at Princeton University and has twice debated at the Oxford Union.[15][16] She has been one of the conflict mediators for four series of BBC Radio 4's "Across the Red Line" presented by British political journalist, Anne McElvoy.[17] Rifkind is a featured speaker at the upcoming TED2024 conference in Vancouver.[18]
She is the co-author, with peace activist Scilla Elworthy of Making Terrorism History (2005)[19] and, with former senior UN diplomat Giandomenico Picco, of The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution,[20] and author of The Psychology of Political Extremism: What would Sigmund Freud have thought about Islamic State.[21]
Publications
Books
- Co-author with Tessa Dalley and Kim Terry. Three Voices of Art Therapy: Image, Client, Therapist. United Kingdom: Routledge, 1993 and 2014. ISBN 9780415077965
- Co-author with Scilla Elworthy. Hearts and Minds: Human Security Approaches to Political Violence. United Kingdom: Demos, 2005. ISBN 9781841801483
- Co-author with Scilla Elworthy. Making Terrorism History. London: Penguin/Random House, 2006. ISBN 9781846040474
- Co-Author with Giandomenico Picco. The Fog of Peace: How to Prevent War, Bloomsbury/I.B. Tauris, 2017. ISBN 9781780768977
- The Psychology of Political Extremism: What would Sigmund Freud have thought about Islamic State, 2018. ISBN 9-781-78220-663-7
- Contributor, "When Empathy Fails: Managing Radical Differences" in Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue 2018.[22]
Articles
Her contributions to journals include:
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (1995-06-01). "Containing the Containers: The Staff Consultation Group". Group Analysis 28 (2): 209–222. doi:10.1177/0533316495282010.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (1995-09-01). "The Creative Process of the Artist and Group Analyst". Group Analysis 28 (3): 331–337. doi:10.1177/0533316495283009.
- "Language of war, language of peace and its application to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict". Psychotherapy and Politics International 2 (2). June 2004.
- "Separating aspirations from realities". The Jerusalem Post. 2006-05-01. https://www.jpost.com/Israel/Separating-aspirations-from-realities.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (13 February 2007). "Want to ease tensions with Iran? Just try talking". The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/gabrielle-rifkind-want-to-ease-tensions-with-iran-just-try-talking-436194.html.
- "From crisis to opportunity". The Jerusalem Post. 2007-02-20. https://www.jpost.com/home/article.aspx?id=52157.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (28 October 2007). "This dialogue of the deaf is making war more likely". The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/gabrielle-rifkind-this-dialogue-of-the-deaf-is-making-war-more-likely-398104.html.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (25 January 2009). "The man to sell peace to the Middle East". The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/gabrielle-rifkind-the-man-to-sell-peace-to-the-middle-east-1515167.html.
- "A route to resolution for Syria and Israel | Gabrielle Rifkind". The Guardian. 2010-02-26. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/feb/26/syria-israel-golan-heights-middle-east.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (28 September 2010). "Solving the West Bank settler problem". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/28/solving-west-bank-settler-problem.
- "Iran nuclear talks: signs of cautious optimism emerge | Gabrielle Rifkind". The Guardian. 2012-05-22. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/22/iran-nuclear-talks-optimism.
- Picco, Giandomenico; Rifkind, Gabrielle (2013). "To help Syria, talk first to Iran and Saudi Arabia". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/12/help-syria-talk-iran-saudi-arabia.
- "A New Levant: a possible way through in the Syrian crisis". https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/gabrielle-rifkind-giandomenico-picco/new-levant-possible-way-through-in-syrian-crisis. Retrieved 2015-09-22.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (2013-09-07). "One signature by Assad could help to avert the bombing". The Times. https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/one-signature-by-assad-could-help-to-avert-the-bombing-rrx75800392.
- "Chilcot tells us what we already knew – how do we implement?". 2016-07-06. https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/gabrielle-rifkind/chilcot-tells-us-what-we-already-knew-how-do-we-implement.
- "Chilcot: all peaceful options were not exhausted". 2016-07-15. https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/gabrielle-rifkind-scilla-elworthy/chilcot-all-peaceful-options-were-not-exhausted.
- Let's try to understand North Korea's actions: it sees the world as its enemy, The Guardian, July 2017.
- Gaza regeneration: we all need dreams for the future, OpenDemocracy, June 2018.
- National Dialogue: Post-Brexit, We Need a UK-Wide Coming Together, OpenDemocracy, January 2019.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (15 February 2019). "Afghanistan's fragile future shows the paradoxical nature of peacebuilding". Prospect. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/author/gabrielle-rifkind.
- "Preparing the Psychological Space for Peacemaking", with Nita Yawanarajah, The New England Journal of Public Policy, May 2019.
- "Ancient Hospitality", with John Harris, New Humanist, July 2019.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (3 December 2019). "We need a path towards reconciliation for Labour and British Jews". The Times. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/we-need-a-path-towards-reconciliation-for-labour-and-british-jews-97s5t6zkj.
- "The Deal of the century: any chance of an honest broker?", Open Democracy, March 2020.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (9 February 2022). "I'm a conflict mediator. This is a way out of the Ukraine crisis". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/09/conflict-mediator-ukraine-vladimir-putin.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (26 January 2023). "How to talk peace while waging war". Prospect. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/60456/how-to-talk-peace-while-waging-war.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (25 November 2023). "A better future can be built for Gaza". Prospect. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/64056/gaza-israel-palestine-hamas-war.
- Rifkind, Gabrielle (11 January 2024). "Israelis and Palestinians by Jonathan Glover review – the psychology of conflict". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/11/israelis-and-palestinians-by-jonathan-glover-review-the-psychology-of-conflict.
Broadcast Media
- BBC Radio 4: The Middle East Conundrum, July 2018.[23]
- BBC Radio 4: Across the Red Line (series 1–4), 2018 and 2019 [24]
- BBC Radio 3: Being Diplomatic, April 2019.[25]
References
- ↑ "Our Team – Oxford Process" (in en-GB). https://www.oxfordprocess.com/team-ii.
- ↑ "Gabrielle Rifkind – The Guardian" (in en-GB). https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gabrielle-rifkind.
- ↑ "Gabrielle Rifkind – openDemocracy" (in en-GB). 9 August 2017. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/author/gabrielle-rifkind/page/2/.
- ↑ Wertheim, Eleanor H (2016). "Focusing on the human element to global conflict resolution efforts and suggesting a vision for the future through the lens of the past". Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 22 (2): 188–189. doi:10.1037/pac0000179. https://doi.org/10.1037/pac0000179.
- ↑ Rifkind, Gabrielle; Yawanarajah, Nita (2019-05-01). "Preparing the Psychological Space for Peacemaking". New England Journal of Public Policy 31 (1): 1–11. ISSN 0749-016X. https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol31/iss1/7.
- ↑ Sherry, Richard (2018). "Richard Sherry in conversation with Gabrielle Rifkind; group analyst, psychotherapist and specialist in conflict resolution. Her latest book is titled The Psychology of Political Extremism: What Sigmund Freud would have thought about Islamic State". New Associations 26: 18–21. https://www.bpc.org.uk/download/661/NA-26-Autumn-2018_landscape_WEB.pdf.
- ↑ Dobell, Graeme (2014-11-13). "Edging through the fog" (in en). https://insidestory.org.au/edging-through-the-fog/.
- ↑ Mark, Peter; Rifkind, Gabrielle (2016). "Establishing group psychotherapy in a student counselling service". Clinical Counselling in Further and Higher Education. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. pp. 87–102. ISBN 978-0-415-19281-1.(See contributors, p. ix)
- ↑ Rivailland, Monique (2014-04-05). "The light house – A psychotherapist who specialises in conflict resolution has transformed her London home with glass and modern art". The Times.
- ↑ "Gabrielle Rifkind | Oxford Research Group". https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/gabrielle-rifkind.
- ↑ "Free Thinking – Being Diplomatic – BBC Sounds" (in en-GB). https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0003svr.
- ↑ "OXFORD PROCESS C.I.C. – Overview (free company information from Companies House)". https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10507450.
- ↑ "About Gabrielle". https://www.gabriellerifkind.co.uk/about.
- ↑ "About Gabrielle". https://www.gabriellerifkind.co.uk/about.
- ↑ Gabrielle Rifkind; Elworthy, Scilla. "Hamas: Time to Talk". All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues (APPGCI). http://conflictissues.org.uk/index.php/past-meetings-mainmenu-37/64-hamas-time-to-talk. Retrieved 9 December 2011.
- ↑ "Iran, the West, and the Region (March 11-12, 2007)". Princeton University. http://www.princeton.edu/~lisd/projects/iran/Iran%20Program.pdf. Retrieved 9 December 2011.
- ↑ "Across the Red Line – Is Tax a Burden". BBC 4 Today. 1 October 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bfz5k2. Retrieved 25 August 2018.
- ↑ "Speakers | TED2024". https://conferences.ted.com/ted2024/speakers.
- ↑ Making Terrorism History. 2 February 2006. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/106/1069358/making-terrorism-history/9781846040474.html. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
- ↑ Rifkind, Gabrielle; Picco, Giandomenico (2017). The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution. Bloomsbury – I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-7807-6897-7.
- ↑ The Psychology of Political Extremism: What Would Sigmund Freud have Thought About Islamic State. London: Routledge. 2018. ISBN 9781782206637. https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology-of-Political-Extremism-What-Would-Sigmund-Freud-have-Thought/Rifkind/p/book/9781782206637.
- ↑ "When Empathy Fails: Managing Radical Differences". in Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue. Belgium: Brepols. 2018. ISBN 978-2-503-58032-6. http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503580326-1.
- ↑ "BBC Radio 4 – Analysis, the Middle East Conundrum". https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b86z4v.
- ↑ "BBC Radio 4 – Across the Red Line". https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09m2bj1.
- ↑ "BBC Radio 3 – Free Thinking, Being Diplomatic". https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003svr.
External links
- Oxford Research Group
- Herbert C. Kelman Institute for Interactive Conflict Transformation
- Gabrielle Rifkind
