About Amity
Amity Conflict Specialists grew from a simple premise: complex conflict calls for more than a single way of understanding or engaging it.
Across research, Ombuds practice, program development, facilitation, community peacebuilding, and creative work, the question has remained consistent: How can we create more comprehensive, human ways to engage conflict and difference?
Amity Conflict Specialists is where those strands come together.
Birthe C. Reimers is a conflict practitioner, Organizational Ombuds, researcher, educator, and founder of Amity Conflict Specialists.
She holds a PhD in International Conflict Management and has worked across organizational and community settings as an Ombuds practitioner and leader, conflict consultant, facilitator, program developer, researcher, and practitioner mentor.
Her work is grounded in the connection between theory and practice. She has built and led Ombuds programs, supported practitioners navigating the complexity of the role, developed conflict-engagement approaches, and explored creative and participatory methods for helping people see and engage familiar dynamics differently.
Birthe developed the Comprehensive Conflict Engagement Model (CCEM) through her doctoral research as a framework for connecting conflict theory, research, and practice.
Her dissertation applied the model through Photovoice, an image- and dialogue-based participatory methodology, in a highly diverse refugee resettlement community. The work explored conflict not only at the relational level, but also through the internal and structural dynamics that shape how people experience their communities.
That foundation has continued to evolve across community peacebuilding, organizational conflict work, Ombuds practice, systemic feedback, practitioner development, and Creative Conflict Engagement.
The methods may change. The underlying pursuit does not: expanding what becomes possible when people have more ways to understand, express, and engage what is happening.
Doctoral Dissertation 2015
Foundational research developing the Comprehensive Conflict Engagement Model and exploring its application through Photovoice as a strategy for engaging internal, relational, and structural dimensions of conflict.
Conflict Resolution Quarterly 2016
Introduces CCEM as a framework connecting conflict theory and practice and demonstrates Photovoice as one possible methodological application.
Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 2016
Examines the use of Photovoice for dialogue and peacebuilding within a diverse refugee resettlement community.
Journal of the International Ombuds Association 2024
Extends Photovoice into organizational Ombuds practice as a participatory approach for understanding lived experiences, creating dialogue, and developing systemic upward feedback.
Journal of the International Ombuds Association, Creative Issue 2025
Explores a participatory kindness-rock initiative designed to promote Positive Peace, placemaking, connection, and belonging within a university community.
Selected applied work
The ideas behind Amity Conflict Specialists have also been developed and tested through practice.
Across Photovoice projects, collaborative art, murals, Positive Peace initiatives, and other participatory work, creative processes have provided ways for people to contribute, encounter different perspectives, make dynamics visible, and engage with one another beyond conventional discussion.
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Photography and facilitated dialogue used in both community peacebuilding and organizational contexts to surface perspectives, create opportunities for reflection, and translate lived experience into knowledge that can inform action.
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A participatory initiative bringing people together through creative expression, placemaking, and shared acts of kindness to foster connection and belonging.
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Shared visual work that allows participants to contribute to something larger than their individual piece while experiencing how each contribution changes the context for what follows.
Birthe is a recipient of the Association for Conflict Resolution’s William J. Kreidler Award for Distinguished Service to Expanding Knowledge in the Field of Conflict Resolution.
Amity Conflict Specialists is based in Atlanta and works with organizations and practitioners in person and remotely, throughout the United States and internationally. Birthe works in both English and German.
Whether you are building an Ombuds program, navigating the practice yourself, or looking for a different way to help a group engage conflict, the first step can simply be a conversation.