Eric Lepp
Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies
“Graffiti is usually dismissed as vandalism in policing, planning practices, and academic research. Yet in conflict-affected cities, it can function closer to a sort of public record,” explained Eric Lepp. “People use walls to mark territory, grieve, declare allegiances, and display their dissent.” As part of the International Consortium for Conflict Graffiti (ICCG), Eric shares a research agenda built around the idea that reading walls can reveal a lot about local experiences with conflict. “We want this research to impact how both academics and policymakers read a city. We recognize graffiti as a source of insight, one that can help shape how peacebuilding work actually engages with the ground-level realities of a place.”
Established around 10 years ago when Birte Vogel, Dylan O’Driscoll, Catherine Arthur, Billy Haworth were teaching at University of Manchester with Eric, the consortium began with conversation, co-authored papers, and workshops. “Working with people outside my own institution and academic field has consistently pushed my scholarship in directions I wouldn’t have found on my own,” reflected Eric. “It has sharpened my sense of how conflict plays out differently across cities, and made me a better researcher for it. These kinds of cross-disciplinary, cross-regional partnerships are, in my experience, where the most useful and grounded knowledge tends to come from, not from one case study working alone, but from different methods, sites, and questions being put in conversation with one another.”
