When language shapes conflict: How the Hamilton Lugar School is advancing research that changes policy
Five Questions with Katherine Ntiamoah, Director for Policy Engagement and Strategic Partnerships, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.
Q1: What is the Global and Area Perspectives (GAP) Symposium, and why does it matter for global affairs?
The Global and Area Perspectives (GAP) Symposium is where the Hamilton Lugar school’s regional expertise meets real-world policy challenges. Now in its second year, GAP convenes leading scholars and policy practitioners to tackle questions that matter for both academic inquiry and operational outcomes. This year’s theme, Languages, Cultures, and Conflict, underscores a distinctive strength: deep regional fluency across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, combined with research that produces actionable insights.
For example, when a scholar analyzing Uyghur resistance symbols sits beside researchers studying Irish youth movements and Ukrainian memory politics, we uncover frameworks that explain how language operates in conflict and how to use that knowledge in diplomacy, development, and security work. This advances academic fields. It also trains students who walk into foreign affairs organizations with analytical tools their colleagues lack.
Q2: What was the focus of GAP 2025, and why is it timely?
Languages, Cultures, and Conflict examined how linguistic and cultural identities shape power, belonging, and resistance worldwide. Held November 7 and 8, the symposium opened with a keynote from the Honorable Evan Ryan, White House Cabinet Secretary from 2021 to 2025 and Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs from 2013 to 2017. Her presence signaled that the questions Hamilton Lugar scholars are asking resonate at the highest levels of government.
In an era of artificial intelligence-driven misinformation campaigns exploiting linguistic fault lines and conflicts from Ukraine to Sudan where language policy itself becomes a weapon, understanding these dynamics is essential for both scholarship and statecraft. The symposium brought together researchers using diverse methodologies to examine one fundamental question: how does language shape conflict, and what does that mean for how we pursue peace?
Q3: How does language operate as a tool of influence and resistance in global contexts?
For example, in the opening panel, Signs of Protest: Language, Symbolism, and Resistance Across Asia, showcased Hamilton Lugar’s comparative regional research. Associate Professors Asaad Alsaleh from Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Gardner Bovingdon from Central Eurasian Studies, alongside Senior Fellow Negar Partow, demonstrated how activists from the Middle East to East Asia mobilize symbols to challenge authority while asserting identity.
Throughout the conference, panelists explored various corners of the globe and showed that activists use idioms, scripts, and symbols to challenge authority, asserting identity while mobilizing communities. The policy implications are clear. In complex environments, policies that succeed are those that account for how people communicate identity, belonging, and dissent. When we overlook these dynamics, we risk weakening the very connections we aim to build. For diplomats, NGOs, and development practitioners, recognizing linguistic and symbolic strategies is crucial for crafting engagement approaches that respect local culture and reduce conflict.
Q4: What lessons does GAP offer for Europe, conflict zones, and indigenous communities?
Saturday’s panels demonstrated the policy relevance of sustained regional expertise. In Language, Memory, and Rhetoric: The View from Europe, Visiting Fulbright Scholar Petro Kuzyk from our Byrnes Institute (REEI) analyzed how language has been weaponized in Russia’s war against Ukraine. These are the fault lines along which wars are fought, and peace agreements collapse or hold.
The panel on International Relations, Language, and the Nature of Contemporary Conflict brought scholars from political science, linguistics, and literature to examine ethnic conflicts using linguistic tools rarely deployed in traditional international relations. This methodological innovation produces the interdisciplinary policy analysis practitioners need but rarely receive.” The panel featured University of South Carolina (USC) Professor of Linguistics Stanley Dubinsky, USC Associate Professor of English Michael Gavin, Bradley University Assistant Professor of English Anyssa (AJ) Murphy, and USC Dag Hammarskjold Professor Emeritus of Political Science Harvey Starr.
The closing panel, Threats to Indigenous Cultures in Areas of Conflict, featured Hamilton Lugar faculty Kathryn Graber, Gulnisa Nazarova who directs our Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region, and Matthew Ajibade from African Studies. With 40 percent of the world’s 7,000 languages at risk, their research demonstrates that protecting indigenous languages safeguards community stability, knowledge systems, and sustainable development. When languages die, we lose conflict resolution mechanisms and governance structures that maintained peace for generations. This research directly informs how international organizations approach post-conflict reconstruction.
Q5: How does GAP connect to Hamilton Lugar’s mission and the future of global studies?
GAP embodies what distinguishes Hamilton Lugar nationally: rigorous regional scholarship integrated with direct policy engagement. Our students do not just observe research. They draft policy briefs for real stakeholders. They conduct field research that feeds policy debates. They engage with practitioners like Secretary Ryan who translated cultural expertise into diplomatic strategy.
The Graduate Student Poster Session showcased research on conflict resolution, cultural diplomacy, and identity politics that these students will carry into the private sector, international development, intelligence agencies, and international organizations.
These conversations lay groundwork for our America’s Role in the World conference April 9-10, 2026, where policymakers and scholars will debate U.S. global engagement strategy. The through line is Hamilton Lugar’s vision: global studies deeply grounded in regional expertise, methodologically rigorous, and directly engaged with policy questions that shape international affairs.
Effective 21st century foreign policy begins with listening across languages and cultures. Whether negotiating in Kinshasa, countering disinformation in Brussels, or strengthening partnerships in Islamabad, cultural and linguistic fluency are strategic imperatives that determine whether policies succeed or fail. At Hamilton Lugar, we advance the research that reveals how language shapes conflict, convene conversations that challenge conventional thinking, and train people who carry both scholarship and its practical applications into the world. That is what it means to advance research that changes policy.
About the author: Katherine Ntiamoah is Director for Policy Engagement and Strategic Partnerships at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. A former U.S. diplomat, she served in Singapore, Democratic Republic of Congo, Washington, DC, Mexico, Belgium, Ghana, Pakistan, Benin, and Brunei, advancing public diplomacy, countering disinformation, and strengthening global partnerships to prepare the next generation of global leaders.