CONFLICT STRATEGIST ● SCHOLAR ● MEDIATOR

Helen Winter,
Ph.D.

My work explores how people, communities, and institutions navigate conflict, and how the way we engage it can strengthen their capacity to navigate what comes next.

BEYOND RESOLUTION

Beyond
resolution.

Resolving a dispute matters. But I am also interested in what happens beyond resolution: whether the people, communities, and institutions involved become more capable of navigating what comes next.

My work explores conflict not only as something to resolve, but as a process that can build self-efficacy, confidence, competence, participation, relationships, and the capacity to act.

WORK

Working with conflict, before, during, and beyond the immediate dispute.

Through research, teaching, and practice, I work at the intersection of people, communities, and institutions to navigate conflict and build more capable ways of engaging across difference.

Speaking & Training

Keynotes, workshops, and learning experiences connecting research with practical tools for conflict, bias, negotiation, mediation, constructive engagement across difference, and the human dimensions of AI. For four consecutive years, I have designed and taught programming for incoming LL.M. students at Harvard Law School, focused on strengthening connection and collaboration within an international cohort.

Conflict Strategy

Working with organizations and communities on complex or recurring conflict, conflict systems, and ways to strengthen the capacity to navigate disagreement.

Mediation & Facilitation

Designing and facilitating processes for difficult conversations, disputes, and collaborative problem-solving.

Can the way we engage conflict leave people, communities, and institutions more capable than before?

FROM IDEAS TO PRACTICE

From ideas to practice.

I do not only study how people and communities navigate conflict.

I create and test ways of putting those ideas into practice.

R3SOLUTE

In 2017, I founded R3SOLUTE to develop peer-mediation and dialogue initiatives with refugee communities in Germany. Rather than relying exclusively on outside professionals to address conflict, we train people to develop the skills and confidence to navigate conflict within their own communities. Since its founding, R3SOLUTE has trained more than 1,000 participants through in-person and online programs.

R3SOLUTE received the Act for Impact Award, including €40,000 in funding, and a Startsocial stipend under the patronage of the German Chancellor. The work also became the foundation for my doctoral research on peer mediation, self-efficacy, and human agency.

Community Conflict Resolution Lab

At Pepperdine’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, I founded the Community Conflict Resolution Lab to connect student learning with community impact. In partnership with organizations including the International Rescue Committee, Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Service, and Malibu Community Labor Exchange, students design and deliver interactive workshops on negotiation, communication, and conflict resolution. This reciprocal model gives students hands-on experience while equipping community members with practical skills to navigate conflict more effectively.

ADR & Social Entrepreneurship

I created ADR & Social Entrepreneurship to explore another way of moving from conflict-resolution knowledge to action. Students use negotiation, mediation, stakeholder analysis, systems thinking, and collaborative problem-solving not only to respond to existing disputes, but to identify broader societal challenges and design interventions to address them.

Across these projects, a common thread runs through my work

Turning ideas into interventions, learning from what happens in practice, and bringing those insights back into research and teaching.

Scholarship

SCHOLARSHIP

My scholarship spans peer mediation and self-efficacy, unconscious bias, dispute-resolution education and social entrepreneurship, meaningful work and artificial intelligence, and the design of conflict processes.

ARTICLE

Follow the Science: Proven Strategies for Reducing Unconscious Bias

By David Hoffman and Helen Winter

ABOUT / CREDIBILITY

Professor
Helen Winter

Professor Helen Winter is an Assistant Professor of Law and Practice at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution and a former Research Fellow with the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Her work connects conflict-resolution scholarship with practice in mediation, education, communities, and institutions.

Pepperdine Caruso School of Law

Assistant Professor of Law and Practice

Harvard Law School

Former Research Fellow, Program on Negotiation