Josefina Echavarría Álvarez
Professor of the Practice; Director, Peace Accords Matrix, the Legacy Project
- Office
- 2110JA Jenkins Nanovic Halls
Notre Dame, IN 46556 - Phone
- (574) 631-8536
- jechavar@nd.edu
Expertise
Peacebuilding; conflict; reconciliation; memory; post-accord & post-conflict contexts; in/security; transitional justice; gender and citizenship; peace education; communication
Biography & Research
Josefina Echavarría Álvarez is professor of the practice in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and the director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) and the Legacy Project at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. She is also a core-affiliated faculty member of the Kroc Institute.
Echavarría Álvarez is a faculty fellow of the Keough School's Pulte Institute for Global Development, Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and Kellogg Institute for International Studies. She also co-leads the Artificial Intelligence / Language Models for Peace and Conflict Research Working Group through Notre Dame's Lucy Institute for Data and Society.
A recipent of a 2025–2026 Benjamin Meaker Annual Award from the the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, Echavarría Álvarez is currently working on the research project “Where Do We Go from Here? Conceptualising Peace Research.”
As the director of the Peace Accords Matrix, Echavarría Álvarez leads researchers, faculty and staff at the Notre Dame campus with quantitative and qualitative analysis of the implementation of more than 40 comprehensive peace accords around the world. She also directs the field units that carry out official monitoring of the implementation of peace accords in real time in Colombia and in Mindanao, the Philippines.
In Colombia, with research staff in the capital and rural regions, PAM’s Colombia Barometer Initiative monitors the entire 2016 final peace accord between the Colombian government and the former FARC-EP guerrillas. In the Philippines, in partnership with Catholic Relief Services, PAM-Mindanao provides monitoring methodology and technical assistance to measure the progress of the Normalization Annex of the 2014 agreement between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The Legacy Project preserves the digital archive of the Colombian Truth Commission, guaranteeing continued access to more than 200,000 files including audiovisual, non-textual knowledge and digitized documents compiled by the truth comission from 2019 to 2022. By focusing on developing new teaching materials, harnessing the lessons and best practices for policy impact and supporting innovative academic research and peacebuilding practice, Echavarría Álvarez works towards advancing transitional justice, human rights and the centrality of victims in peace processes.
Prior to coming to Notre Dame, Echavarría Álvarez was co-director of the Research Center for Peace and Conflict at the University of Innsbruck and a fellow at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Trinity College in Ireland. She has been a guest lecturer at numerous universities around the world on peacebuilding, peace education, gender, conflict analysis and research methods. She has also managed diverse international cooperation projects in the fields of gender, citizenship, and curricular development for peace and conflict studies.
Echavarría Álvarez holds a Ph.D. in peace, conflict and democracy from the Jaume I University in Spain, an M.A. in peace, development, security and international conflict transformation from the University of Innsbruck in Austria and a B.A. in government and international relations from the University Externado in Colombia.
Honors/Awards
- 2025 – 2026 Benjamin Meaker Award. University of Bristol
- Top 50 Women Leaders of Indiana, 2025 - Women We Admire - Indiana chapter
- 2023 Lucy Global Breakthrough Award - Lucy Societal Impact Awards, Lucy Institute for Data and Society, University of Notre Dame
Professional Roles/Positions
- Editorial Board, Journal of Disappearance Studies (University of Bristol)
- Cambridge Positive Peace Education Hub Expert Working Group (Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge)
Recent Work
- Barometer Initiative reports (English & Spanish)
- Legacy Project publications
Courses
- Peace Agreements: Global Perspectives and the Colombian Experience (undergraduate program in peace studies)
- Truth Commissions: Conceptual Foundations and Case Studies (undergraduate)
- Policy Lab: From Colombia to Global Peacemaking (master of global affairs)
- Peace Agreements and Implementation: Challenges and Opportunities for Research, Policy and Practice (undergraduate and graduate)