Join us today—Friday, February 6—for an online event exploring the latest work and thinking at the intersection of behavioral science and peace and conflict. The event is free to attend, and you can join the event here. Below you’ll find more about the theme and the full program for the event.
Date: Friday, February 6, 2026
Time: 9:00am – 4:30pm New York/Bogotá | 2:00pm – 9:30pm London | 3:00pm – 10:30pm Berlin/Lagos | 5:00pm -12:30am Nairobi
Location: Online
Cost: Free to attend
Event link: Join the event
View the recording: View the full recording here
If you’d like live captioning during the event, please use the Chrome browser with the live captioning feature enabled. Instructions here.
Theme: Hard Truths & Paths Forward
Preventing conflict and promoting peace is always an urgent undertaking. Recently, these efforts have felt even more pressing.
Around the world, conflicts rage and simmer. People are killed, injured, and displaced. The instability of global politics has exacerbated already fraught situations. Powerful digital technologies create new fronts on which people fight.
Wherever we find conflict or peace, we find ourselves. We find our attitudes and emotions, our norms and traditions, our governments and institutions. A better understanding of who we are is crucial to understanding who we can become—people at war or people at peace.
The theme of Neuropaz 2026—hard truths and paths forward—reflects the many roadblocks that characterize this line of work, including funding cuts to research and aid agencies, technologies that amplify outrage, and politicians who prioritize power over peace. Neuropaz 2026 will bring together leading scientists, practitioners, policymakers, and funders to face these obstacles head-on. Through open, candid conversations about what stands in our way, we hope to illuminate new paths forward.
Progam
Please find the program below. Session times may change in advance of the event. We’ll keep the most up-to-date schedule on this page.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
9:00 – 9:30am EST (New York)
Andrés Casas and Evan Nesterak will introduce the event and provide an overview of the program. They’ll also show a brief video about the life and work of Emile Bruneau (to whom the event is dedicated).
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REFLECTIONS ON BUILDING PEACE
9:30 – 10:00am EST (New York)
In recognition of the tenth anniversary of the historic peace agreement in Colombia, Neuropaz will present Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia from 2010-2018 and leader of the peace process, with the inaugural Neuropaz Lifetime Achievement Award. President Santos will join Andrés Casas for a conversation to reflect on the decade since the agreement and share how he continues his work toward peace through Fundación Compaz.
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BUILDING PEACE IN COLOMBIA 10 YEARS AFTER THE HISTORIC PEACE AGREEMENT
10:00 – 10:30am EST (New York)
In this session, we’ll explore two lines of applied research that emerged after the 2016 Peace Agreement. The two cases are powerful illustrations of how behavioral science is being applied to help build peace and prevent conflict in Colombia and beyond.
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SOCIAL GRAVITY
10:30 – 11:15am EST (New York)
Betsy Levy Paluck will introduce the concept of social gravity— “a fundamental force of human social life that pulls people toward common ideas or behaviors in their social worlds”—and describe how it influences our behavior in contexts of peace and conflict.
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UNDERSTANDING BEHAVIOR DURING AN ACTIVE CONFLICT
11:15am – 12:15pm EST (New York)
What is the value in understanding human behavior during an active conflict? And how do you do it? We’ll explore these questions through work happening at three key levels: the individual, the community, and the institutional. We’ll hear about individual interventions happening in Syria, research on the spread of hate in online digital communities, and why a behavioral perspective is key to building democratic institutions that last.
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BREAK – 30 MINUTES
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SCHOLARS REFLECT ON PAST AND ONGOING VIOLENCE
12:45 – 2:00pm EST (New York)
How do scholars who are personally connected to contexts of past and ongoing violence experience, navigate, and rethink their work? In this panel, scholars from regions affected by violence will share their reflections.
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BREAK – 15 MINUTES
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COULD BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE PREVENT A WAR?
2:15 – 3:00pm EST (New York)
What would it take to use behavioral science to prevent war? This panel will feature a discussion between researchers, practitioners, and technologists who each have a role to play in a) discovering new solutions and testing them in the field, b) paying for those solutions, and c) driving down costs through better technology for targeting, forecasting, and scaling.
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INNOVATIONS IN PEACE FUNDING
3:00 – 3:45pm EST (New York)
Peace funding stands at a crossroads. Bilateral donors have substantially reduced their investments in peace and other foreign aid. At the same time, new pools of capital are entering the development space, often prioritizing interventions with clear, quantifiable outcomes. How do we make the case for investing in peace when the field sits between competing funding paradigms? What innovative models might provide a path forward? How do we bridge traditional peace funders, emerging capital sources, and practitioners to fund what matters most, even when impact is hardest to prove?
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REFLECTIONS ON HARD TRUTHS
3:50 – 4:15pm EST (New York)
James Robinson will reflect on the hard truths he’s faced over the course of his career. What has he learned, why has he changed his mind, and where does he think he’s going next?
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CONCLUSION AND GOODBYE
4:15 – 4:30pm EST (New York)
Andrés Casas and Evan Nesterak will bring Neuropaz 2026 to a close, and they’ll share ways attendees can access resources from our speakers and stay engaged.
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