The Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory (formerly the Kennedy School Negotiation Project) develops ways to connect students of negotiation with practitioners on the frontlines and faculty leading cutting-edge research.
We advance the field of experiential learning and motivate innovations in teaching advanced negotiation in simulated environments. We pursue the interdisciplinary study of developments and trends at the intersection of negotiation and leadership.
In 2016, the Kennedy School Negotiation Project was launched based on the belief that you can’t lead if you can’t negotiate. Today’s public leaders are faced with increasingly complex problems that require cross-boundary, collaborative leadership. At our core, our mission was, and remains, to equip next-generation practitioners with a comprehensive toolkit and repertoire of negotiation skills to enable leaders to tackle the world’s toughest problems.
Now, we are expanding this mission and connecting students with ways to not only develop their own interpersonal negotiation skills, but to practice with and learn from real world practitioners, and seek to understand the complex conflict ecosystems we all inhabit.
Through our programming, students will find ways to develop their own skills outside of the classroom; find opportunities to connect frameworks and tools to their specific negotiation challenges and contexts; work with frontline negotiators from around the world; and advance innovative research.
Download the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory one pager.
Virtual Negotiation Training for International Climate Negotiators
In the context of Harvard University’s decision to expand its research and education on climate change, the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory at Harvard Kennedy School has decided to build a program for education on and skill-building in the field of climate change negotiations. As a first activity to live up to this aspiration, NCRC has launched a 12-month project to develop free virtual negotiation trainings for United Nations Conference of the Parties negotiators from underrepresented communities and countries with few resources to provide such training.
A key goal of the project is to integrate and bridge canonical research-based negotiation training methods with the specificities of negotiating climate policy in multilateral settings. NCRC is developing a number of proprietary teaching materials for this purpose.
Boiling Point: Negotiation, Leadership, and Climate Change
“Boiling Point” is a highly interactive workshop series designed to build leadership and negotiation skills to drive action on climate change. In these workshops, selected students will interact with seasoned international climate change negotiators and will be be introduced to the system dynamics and interactions of climate change policies through interactive work sprint with MIT’s EN-ROADS simulator. The workshop culminates in a full day Capstone Negotiation Simulation, where participants will assume the role of sector stakeholders and countries to negotiate a global policy mix based on the EN-ROADS simulator. Applications are open- apply now.
Why It Worked is a pioneering global and interdisciplinary initiative that delves into the transformative processes that ended the world’s most intractable conflicts over the past 70 years, to understand how long-standing, violent conflicts have successfully transitioned to better, violence-free realities. By analyzing these cases, the project provides insights and strategies that can inform the work of communities in conflict zones around the world. This multi-year study seeks to build an applicable model for conflict resolution that can be used by practitioners focused on protracted, asymmetric, and ethnonational conflicts globally.
The Coaching Clinic is an intensive clinic designed using best practices in negotiation skill development and a research-based coaching protocol. The Clinic is an opportunity to improve your negotiations performance through one-on-one coaching with a trained coach who will understand your personal goals, observe you in multiple exercises, and provide feedback and an opportunity for guided reflection. Our coaching team consists of students and staff who have taken advanced courses in negotiation and are trained in giving feedback and supporting skill development.
Learn more about the Boiling Point: Negotiation, Leadership, and Climate Change workshop.
Each semester, HKS students have the opportunity to work with Faculty Director Brian Mandell and Director Monica Giannone to design cutting-edge negotiation cases and simulations to be used in degree program courses, Executive Education programs, and the wider world. Recent cases include a simulation focused on building a high-speed rail line in a fictionalized European country.
