Michael Niconchuk

Michael Niconchuk is a researcher, practitioner, and author who has spent his career exploring what it means to experience and transform trauma and chronic unsafety experienced by communities touched by war and violence. His work, deeply informed by his family’s experiences in Central America and more than a decade of deep relationship with forcibly displaced Syrian communities, integrates historical perspectives, affective neurobiology, and peacebuilding, elevating the science and practice of safety as a key concept in psychological and social repair work. Much of his writing and practice is guided by two questions: how do our individual and collective searches for safety promote both rupture and repair? And how should the logic of human physiology and the natural world influence the design of programs aimed at healing and peacebuilding? 

Trained in security studies, international relations, and social cognition, Michael has worked for the past 13 years in West, Central, and South Asia, accompanying community and government efforts to design and provide care for persons affected by violent conflict, extremism, and displacement. Specifically, he has been heavily involved with programs for Syrian communities around the world, as well as the return and rehabilitation of the families of foreign extremist fighters in Iraq and Syria. He has advised various United Nations agencies and national governments on the neurobiology of extremism, the biobehavioral impacts of trauma and chronic stress, and healing-centered peacebuilding. He is the co-founder of Salama, a nonprofit initiative that focuses on the inner safety of war-affected communities, and will be featured in the forthcoming documentary Neuropeacers.