House of Nino
Peacebuilding Through Education, Research & the Arts
I am Nino Kukhianidze, a peacebuilder, educator, and researcher whose work explores how education, culture, and creativity can contribute to conflict transformation and a culture of peace.
For more than a decade, I have taught undergraduate and graduate courses in peace and conflict studies at the University of Georgia, the European University, & the International Black Sea University working with Georgian and international students in both English and Georgian. Alongside my teaching, I have worked across peace education, dialogue, conflict prevention, democracy, citizenship, and social transformation.
Alongside my academic work, I have contributed to peacebuilding, democracy, dialogue, conflict prevention, and social transformation through work with Georgian public institutions, the Public Defender’s Office, USAID-supported programs, civil society organizations, and interfaith initiatives.
I am from Georgia and currently divide my time between Georgia and the United States.
House of Nino brings this academic and professional work into conversation with my creative practice. Through essays and visual art published as Nino Piano and original music created through Georgia Calls, I explore how stories, images, and sound shape the ways people understand conflict, experience identity and belonging, relate to one another, and imagine peace.
The idea of the house reflects a space capable of holding these different identities and forms of expression together. Rather than separating the researcher, educator, writer, musician, and visual artist, House of Nino allows them to exist in relationship with one another - as different expressions of the same peacebuilding inquiry.
Across these different forms, my work returns to one central question:
How do people learn peace - not only through education and institutions, but also through culture, storytelling, music, and art?
House of Nino brings together four interconnected dimensions of this inquiry:
Understanding, Meaning, Feeling, and Seeing.
Together, they reflect my belief that peace is not built through knowledge alone. It must also be interpreted, felt, imagined, expressed, and practiced.
Understanding
Research, Teaching & Peacebuilding Practice
Understanding is the academic and professional dimension of my work, developed through more than a decade of university teaching, research, public engagement, and peacebuilding practice under my name, Nino Kukhianidze.
This work examines how peace, conflict, and democratic life are shaped by education, institutions, political power, identity, culture, and public participation. My published research has addressed political polarization and state capture, crime and corruption, frozen conflicts, violent extremism, regional peace processes, conflict transformation, and peace education.
Alongside my academic work, I have contributed to peacebuilding, democratic development, dialogue, conflict prevention, and social transformation through work with Georgian public institutions, the Public Defender’s Office, USAID-supported programs, civil society organizations, and interfaith initiatives. These experiences have allowed me to work across policy, education, community engagement, and public dialogue.
Across my teaching, I have led undergraduate and graduate courses in conflict analysis and resolution, international conflict, politics, democracy and citizenship, and conflict resolution in education, working in both Georgian and English with Georgian and international students.
My current interests increasingly explore how people learn peace—not only through formal education, institutions, and public policy, but also through stories, music, art, dialogue, memory, and culture.
At the heart of my teaching and professional practice is the belief that peace education should do more than transfer knowledge. It should strengthen moral imagination, encourage dialogue, deepen empathy, develop critical awareness, and help people recognize their own capacity to contribute to peaceful societies.
Research and Teaching Areas
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Peace and Conflict Studies
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Conflict Analysis and Transformation
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Peace Education
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Political Polarization and Democratic Resilience
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Conflict Prevention and Violent Extremism
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Democracy and Citizenship
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Dialogue and Intercultural Understanding
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Culture, Creativity, and Social Transformation
Professional Practice
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Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention
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Public Policy and Institutional Engagement
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Civil Society and Community Dialogue
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Interfaith and Intercultural Cooperation
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Research and Program Development
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Teaching, Mentorship, and Public Speaking
Courses Taught
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EDUC6112E-Conflict Resolution in Education ( 2021/2022; 2023/2024; )
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IREL1240-Causes of International Conflict and War ( 2016/2017; 2021/2022; 2023/2024; 2024/2025; )
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IREL6120-International Conflict Analysis ( 2019/2020; 2020/2021; 2021/2022; 2022/2023; 2023/2024; 2025/2026; )
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POLI1220-Introduction to Politics ( 2017/2018; 2018/2019; 2019/2020; 2020/2021; )
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SOCL2525-Democracy and Citizenship ( 2014/2015; 2015/2016; 2016/2017; )
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International Conflict Resolution (Spring 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026)
International Black Sea University
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Conflict Analysis and Resolution (Spring 2016, Fall 2017)
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Conflict and Conflict Resolution (Fall 2014)
Selected Publications
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Kukhianidze & Kukhianidze (2025), Polarization and Capture of the Country, Environment and Society, Volume 18.
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Kukhianidze & Kukhianidze (2023), Crime and corruption in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. Environment and Society, Volume 9
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Kukhianidze, N. (2021), Peace education in post-conflict settings, Annales Politologia; Section K, Volume 28, No2. 51-60
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Kukhianidze, N. (2020), The role of peace education in the process of conflict transformation. Environment and Society, Volume 2, pp. 22-34
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Kukhianidze, N. (2019). The dimensions of Georgia’s frozen conflicts. New Eastern Europe, Volume 5(XXXVIII), pp. 54–60.
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Farrell, W., Kukhianidze, N., Goguadze, G., Khechinashvili, G., Sirbiladze, T. and Zecevic-Bean, N. (2018). Georgia Violent Extremism Risk Analysis. USAID.
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Brunova-Kalisetska, I., Alıcı, N., Kukhianidze, N., Kerimova, R. and Grigoryan, A. (2017). The Mosaic of Solutions: Alternative Peace Processes for the South Caucasus. Caucasus Edition: Journal of Conflict Transformation, Volume 2, pp. 203-256.
Nino Kukhianidze
Meaning
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At the Crossroads of Technology and Truth: Transforming Conflict in a New Spiritual Era
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When the Body Says No: Realism, Idealism, and the Pathology of the International System
Writing, Reflection & Peace Philosophy
Meaning is the reflective and philosophical dimension of my peacebuilding practice.
Published under the name Nino Piano, my essays explore how peace and conflict appear not only in politics and institutions, but also in families, relationships, identities, cultural expectations, creativity, memory, and everyday life.
Through personal reflection and social analysis, I examine the visible and invisible structures that shape human experience. I am interested in the stories people inherit, the roles they are taught to perform, the silences they carry, and the possibilities that emerge when those patterns are questioned.
Writing allows me to connect peacebuilding with lived experience - to explore what peace asks of us emotionally, culturally, ethically, and spiritually.
Themes:
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Peace philosophy
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Conflict in everyday life
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Identity and belonging
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Power, visibility and social expectations
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Creativity and moral imagination
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Feminine and masculine archetypes
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Spirituality, meaning and transformation
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Culture, memory and human relationships
Nino Piano
Feeling
Sphairistike is an early reflection on truth, identity, and the quiet conflicts that shape our lives. Drawing on music, storytelling, and the forgotten original name of modern tennis, the song explores how creativity can become a path toward authenticity, healing, and peace
Music, Voice & Storytelling
Feeling is the emotional and musical dimension of my peacebuilding practice.
Georgia Calls is my original music project, exploring identity, belonging, memory, conflict, healing, and transformation through song.
Music can express experiences that ordinary language cannot always reach. Through lyrics, melody, voice, and visual storytelling, I explore both personal and collective questions: what it means to belong, what is inherited through families and cultures, how silence shapes identity, and how people reclaim their voices.
For me, songwriting is also a form of peacebuilding. It creates space for vulnerability, recognition, emotional truth, and human connection. It allows private experiences to become shared stories -and shared stories can help people feel less divided and less alone.
Themes:
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Identity, voice and becoming
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Home, belonging and displacement
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Love, loss and transformation
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Family, memory and inheritance
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Silence, authenticity and expression
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Healing and emotional truth
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Peace, conflict and the human condition
Faith Family Football explores the relationship between tradition and values. Written during a time of uncertainty, it asks whether the forms of our lives can change without losing what matters most. Football may become soccer, countries may change, and the future may look different than imagined, but faith, love, commitment, and family remain worth building. The song is also a prayer to Saint Thomas—the apostle who found faith through doubt—and a reminder that hope often begins not with certainty, but with the courage to keep believing.
Georgia Calls
Seeing
Visual Art, Identity & Imagination
Seeing is the visual and imaginative dimension of my peacebuilding practice.
Drawing has been one of my earliest forms of expression. Through portraits and studies of women, I explore identity, emotion, presence, vulnerability, strength, and transformation.
More recently, visual art has become closely connected to my writing. My drawings accompany essays as visual reflections on peace and conflict, identity and belonging, visibility and silence, and the continuing process of becoming.
Visual art invites us to pause and look more carefully. It can challenge familiar assumptions, make hidden experiences visible, and open space for empathy and interpretation.
For me, seeing is an essential part of peacebuilding. Before conflict can be transformed, people must learn to see one another - and themselves - with greater attention, complexity, and humanity.
Themes:
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Feminine identity and expression
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Peace, conflict and human connection
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Strength and vulnerability
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Visibility and silence
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Transformation and becoming
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Symbolism and archetype
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Observation, empathy and imagination
