Mark Davidheiser is a socio-cultural anthropologist who specializes in issues of social interaction, with a particular focus on conflict, cooperation, and peacebuilding. His approach to conflict analysis and resolution flows from an interdisciplinary perspective informed by the three main bases of his expertise: 1) critical analysis of the scholarly and applied literature, 2) original field research, and 3) applied experience as a practitioner and trainer. These will be described further in the text below.

In his roughly 15 year engagement with the fields of anthropology and conflict analysis and resolution, Davidheiser has assumed the roles of scholar, researcher, professor, and trainer to address a variety of theoretical and practical issues. Several of the most significant of these are:

• socio-cultural dimensions of conflict and cooperation
• intercultural mediation and negotiation theory and techniques
• non-Western dispute management modalities
• legal anthropology and legal pluralism
• questions of social justice and power in dispute processing
• international development and assistance
• peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction
• governance and legal reform
• migration and forced displacement and resettlement
• farmer-herder coexistence and conflict
• identity politics, socio-cultural diversity, and social prejudice
  

His work targets a variety of geographical locations, with a particular focus on rural peoples, Muslims, and the African continent.

Davidheiser’s scholarship, training, and practice encompass a variety of conflict resolution methodologies. These include conflict management and transformation tools such as mediation, bargaining, and negotiation. His work also incorporates problem-solving, facilitative, and interest-based approaches and advanced techniques such as intercultural, narrative and transformative strategies.

Guilford College granted Davidheiser a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology/Anthropology, and it was during his time at this Quaker institution that he began to focus on issues of peace and conflict. While in North Carolina, he volunteered as a court-connected victim-offender mediator and conducted mediation and aggression replacement training for prospective mediators and at-risk youth.

Davidheiser’s graduate studies began with intensive training in ethnographic research through Northwestern University. He then conducted a study of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute, focusing on Navajo relocation resisters living on the Hopi Partitioned Lands. His graduate career continued at the University of Florida, where he received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. Davidheiser has also participated in a variety of other study, training, and teaching programs related to social scientific research, peace and conflict studies, conflict resolution methods, and his regional interests.

Currently, Davidheiser is a faculty member of Nova Southeastern University’s Department of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (DCAR), where he chairs the African Working Group on Peace and Conflict (www.africaworkinggroup.org). Davidheiser is affiliated with a number of other academic and research institutions, including scholarly journals. He is a Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology and served as Academic Director for a study and training program produced by the International Institute of Mediation and Conflict Resolution.

Dr. Davidheiser’s research and project design encompass qualitative, quantitative, participatory, and ethnographic methods. He frequently employs methodological triangulation in order to expand his studies and substantiate his findings. Various grants and fellowships have been awarded in recognition and support of Dr. Davidheiser’s work.

One major research and teaching interest is indigenous/local methods of conflict mitigation and their interactions and hybridization with imported/non-local dispute processing practices. He has conducted field research on that topic in Eritrea, The Gambia, and Senegal. He is co-director of an emerging intercontintental study on donor sponsored conflict resolution projects in the Global South (described below).


Current research projects include:

• International Development, Governance, and Alternative Dispute Resolution: Connections and challenges – Original Senegambian data are used to illuminate the nexus between development, decentralization, law, and dispute management and elucidate the potential impacts of ADR programs in the Global South.
• Political Conflict and Changes in Women’s Roles: The Gambia and Liberia – Comparative project undertaken with Veronika Fuest of the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology.
• Peacebuilding Interventions in the Global South: Western-local interfaces in conflict resolution – Comparative project examines the efficacy of donor-sponsored projects in the Global South. Field and archival data are used to evaluate such efforts, measure the significance of sociocultural variance, examine the role of local social institutions, and identify the theoretical and policy implications.
• Customary Law and Social Justice: Power and gender issues in dispute processing – Original data from North America, The Gambia, Senegal, and Eritrea. Using emic and etic perspectives and the secondary literature, the analysis elucidates the relative advantages of various fora—encompassing customary law, unofficial practices, court-annex ADR, and the formal judicial system—for disputants of low social status. The findings problematize prevailing social scientific theories and policy-making strategies.

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