Adamia, Van Buren and Odenheimer win Karpf and Hahn peace awards

From left, Natan Odenheimer, Sarah van Buren and Shota Adamia

From Ireland to Israel to Timor Leste, the three winners of the 2012 Maurice J. and Fay B. Karpf and Ari Hahn Peace Awards will be working on peace and coexistence around the world.

Brandeis undergraduate and graduate students who wish to work towards coexistence and peaceful conflict resolution are invited to apply for the award, which is given annually. Shota Adamia ’15, Natan Odenheimer ’15 and Sarah van Buren ’13 have been named this year’s winners.

Adamia plans to conduct research in Ireland and Northern Ireland on issues of nationalism and unionism. In the spring, he will arrange an exhibition of his photos and films, which he will combine with relevant texts. The exhibit will be open to public.

Odenheimer will conduct and co-moderate five informal meetings between former special-units teams of the Israeli army and young Arab-Israeli leaders, and will blog about the experience. The project is “catered towards the kind of people who likely would never otherwise go to a coexistence event,” he says.

Van Buren is working on the implementation of a domestic violence module in an existing midwife education program for community based health workers from rural regions of Timor Leste. This winter, she will do field work with 50 rurally based midwives.