Lisa Schirch

Lisa Schirch is a Research Professor at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at Eastern Mennonite University. She specializes in human security, civil-military-police collaboration, and peacebuilding strategies. Her work emphasizes the necessity of cooperation between civil society, military, and police sectors for sustainable security. Schirch recently published the Handbook on Human Security: A Civil-Military-Police Curriculum, a groundbreaking resource developed with global partners and supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. She also co-chairs a U.S. State Department task force on training Foreign Service officers to engage religious actors in conflict zones.

• Adjunct role: Part-time affiliation with the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research (Japan).
• Collaborations: Worked with military leaders in the Philippines and Tajikistan to foster security-sector partnerships.
• Future projects: Authoring A Tribe Called Mennonite, exploring Mennonite peace theology through art forms like fraktur, and leading a seminar on violent extremism at EMU.

Her research bridges academic theory and practical fieldwork, focusing on peacebuilding methodologies that integrate religious, military, and civilian perspectives.