Rebecca Petz

My name is Rebecca Petz and the three words coming into my mind, when talking about the European Union are: Opportunity, responsibility, and peace: Opportunity to broaden your field of experiences to get to know new people and perspectives, responsibility to stand up for solidarity, for democracy and common values. And peace the main achievement of the European Union and positive peace the main objective of it. Peace on the one side and conflict on the other are the phenomena I am normally studying during my Master of Peace and Conflicts Studies in Magdeburg.

Hereby, I am mostly interested in the transition phases from conflicts to less conflictual conflicts. As I studied Social Work in my bachelors, I am also always concerned about the question how individuals and the society reflect these processes and impact them. People impacting society is also a relevant topic on the European level for me. As trainer of the European Solidarity Corps I see many times how the opportunity to gain new experiences somewhere else is enjoyed by many young people and how they are also motivated through their european international experience to take up responsibility. It only stays the question, how the European Solidarity Corps is then connected to peace. That is what I want to look at.