Abstract

Could a deliberative process, such as a citizens’ assembly, be used to design a future peace process for Cyprus? Could creative practices, such as a pre-assembly interspecies council, help to activate the imagination of members of such an assembly? These questions were at heart of a workshop held in November 2024 at the Home for Cooperation, a community centre located within the UN-controlled buffer zone in Nicosia. This intervention reports on the innovative, design-driven methodology used in the workshop; and on the key insights that it generated around risks and rewards associated with proposing the use of citizens’ assemblies and of creative methods in the Cyprus context.

Keywords

citizens’ assemblies • Cyprus peace process • interspecies council • design methods • creative methods

Key messages

• Design-driven methods can aid knowledge sharing and co-production.

• Any citizens’ assembly requires careful, inclusive and context-specific planning.

• Creative practices such as an interspecies council can prompt and facilitate the imaginative (as well as the practical and critical) capacities of assembly members, but they require careful, inclusive, context-specific planning.

Perry-Kessaris, A., Mullen, F., & Samani, M. O. (2025). What if a citizens’ assembly were to design a future Cyprus peace process?. Global Social Challenges Journal, 4(2), 452-460. https://doi.org/10.1332/27523349Y2025D000000061

What If a Citizens’ Assembly Were to Design a Future Cyprus Peace Process?

11 December 2025

Authors

Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris, University of Kent, UK;

Fiona Mullen, Sapienta Economics, Cyprus;

Dr Meltem Onurkan Samani, Cyprus Peace and Dialogue Centre, Cyprus