Rochelle Arms, S-CAR PhD Student

Rochelle Arms, a PhD student at S-CAR, first became involved in the field of conflict analysis and resolution, when she volunteered for a kick-start mediation program at her undergraduate school. “What started out as an extracurricular activity soon evolved into a full time profession, and after completing my undergrad program, I got a job as a mediator and restorative justice practitioner in Lexington, Kentucky,” she said. “We worked with homicide offenders and victim survivors throughout Kentucky, preparing them for dialogues. This was very difficult and intense work, because there was so much pain on both sides.” The intentions of the two groups critical to this work - victim advocates and defendant advocates – also made her work more challenging as they often disagreed on the meaning of “mending the harm.”

Rochelle’s work, though, earned her a Rotary Peace Fellowship from the Rotary Foundation to study in Argentina, where she focused on the application of conflict resolution methods to disagreements between indigenous people and the government.  She became interested in the “cultural broker,” an idea inspired in part by Kevin Avruch, the Dean at S-CAR, in determining the ideal profiles of cultural brokers in Argentina, “who could navigate comfortably and effectively amongst indigenous activists and government officials.” After completing the fellowship, Rochelle returned to the United States, where she set up and managed the New York Peace Institute’s restorative justice program. She trained mediators and established a referral system from the criminal court for misdemeanor cases (mostly minor assaults).

Although Rochelle was very happy with her career choice, she wanted to have more of an empirical understanding of why certain methods were chosen in mediation practice, as it seemed more like a “trial and error process.” “I also want to understand how our biology affects the conflict experience and what types of interventions result with a better understanding of this. I think we need more serious study of the biopsychology of conflict so that we can improve our processes for supporting people in conflict.” This assessment led Rochelle to S-CAR.  After she completes her degree, she will look to combine her two passions, teaching and mediation, toward becoming a true scholar-practitioner in the field.