Inclusive Narratives Practice Group /

Sara Cobb

Dr. Sara Cobb is Professor Emerita at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, where she was also the director for eight years. In this context, she teaches and conducts research on the relationship between narrative and conflict. She is also the Director of the Center for the Study of Narrative and Conflict Resolution at the Carter School, which provides a hub for scholarship on narrative approaches to conflict analysis and resolution.

Dr. Cobb is widely published. Her book, Speaking of Violence: The Politics and Poetics of Narrative in Conflict Resolution (Oxford University Press) lays out the theoretical basis for a narrative lens on both conflict analysis and conflict resolution; this perspective presumes that conflict is a struggle over meaning, anchored in and by the stories we tell. Formerly Executive Director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, she has been a leader in the fields of negotiation and conflict resolution studies, conducting narrative research on adaptive governance, serious games, resilient communities and sustainable systems. Currently, she is conducting research on conflict prevention in the Arctic.