This book maps the discursive terrain and potential of person to person peacebuilding as it intersects with, and is embedded in, intercultural communication. It foregrounds the voices and discourses of participants who came together in the virtual intercultural borderlands of online exchange through a service-learning project with a non-profit organization which focused on peace through education in Afghanistan, primarily through English language tutoring. By analyzing the voices and perspectives of US-based tutors who are pre-service teachers of English as an Additional Language, in equal measure with the voices and perspectives of adult English learners in Afghanistan, the authors examine how intercultural interactants begin to work as peacebuilders. The participants describe the profound transformations they undergo throughout their intercultural tutoring journeys, transformations which evidence three dimensions of person to person peacebuilding: the personal, relational and structural. Inspired by these voices, the book further explores ways teachers and teacher educators of language and intercultural communication can more deliberately leverage the affordance of peacebuilding, whether face to face or in the virtual intercultural borderlands of online exchange.

Amy Jo Minett is Associate Professor of English and Graduate TESOL at Salem State University, USA. Her research interests include peacebuilding through language teaching, English language education in conflict countries, and the role of ELT in building open societies.

Sarah E. Dietrich is Assistant Professor in the English Department and MA TESOL program, Southeast Missouri State University, USA. Her research interests include eService-Learning, teacher development, and culturally responsive teaching.

Didem Ekici is ESOL Faculty and Department Co-chair at the College of Alameda and teaches at the University of San Francisco and Golden Gate University, USA. Her research interests include intercultural competence development and culturally responsive teaching, distance education, virtual exchange, teacher education, and equity and the digital divide.