Speaker Spotlight
Dr Elizabeth Phillips
Dr Elizabeth Phillips is Director of Education and Engagement at the Woolf Institute as well as teaching Political Theology, Multi-faith Awareness, and Conflict Transformation in the Cambridge Theological Federation, and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
In our latest speaker spotlight, we talk with Dr Phillips about her upcoming workshop, Disagreeing Well: Conflict Transformation, on 18 March 2026. Elizabeth invites us to rethink disagreement not as something to avoid, but as something that can add depth and flavour to our relationships. Drawing on her work in conflict transformation, she explores how understanding our own conflict styles, listening with curiosity and responding with care can turn moments of difference into opportunities for learning, growth and mutual flourishing.
"A life full of good disagreement is a life of learning, growth, and mutual flourishing."
What inspired you to explore disagreement, and how can it be a gift rather than a threat?
My academic work explores the intersections of religion, ethics, and politics. I decided many years ago that I needed practical training in conflict transformation to complement and inform my theoretical, academic work. And that training now contributes to the work I do at the Woolf Institute, aiming to build good relations between people across difference.
The conflict transformation approach recognises that some conflicts are threats (especially where there is a large power imbalance or abuse of power – so power analysis is key to understanding any conflict), but that many other disagreements can be gifts, because they are always opportunities to deepen our understanding of ourselves and one another, and to find better ways forward together. We disagree because we are different, and difference is a good thing, so long as we disagree well and use our power appropriately.
How can conflict transform relationships rather than just create division?
We each have our own styles of working with others and of dealing with conflict. When we fall into unexamined ways of acting out the worst aspects of our conflict styles, a difficult situation can escalate and explode, break down a relationship, or fester beneath the surface, unaddressed. But when we learn how to lean into the best aspects of our conflict styles, we can work towards positive transformation of a difficult situation into an opportunity for learning, growth, and more respectful relationships.
Which skills make someone truly good at disagreeing well?
In order to disagree well, we need to dig deep (moving beyond our default reactions to more centred ways of navigating conflict), to listen openly (with a genuine belief that we have something to learn), to speak responsively (rather than reactively), and to reframe (putting the presenting issues of a conflict into wider perspective).
How can we apply these techniques to today’s political and global polarisation, and even our own lives?
Polarisation arises from the opposite of each of these skills. We easily become polarised when we rely on knee-jerk reactions (which may be too aggressive or too passive), when we fail to listen deeply to people with differing views and experiences, when we speak in reactionary ways, and when we ignore the bigger picture. That applies to an escalating conflict with a family member or co-worker as much as it does to political discourse, and so do the key skills for disagreeing well, including power analysis.
How is social media shaping the way we personally see disagreement, and what can we do to navigate this?
Social media, at least as they currently operate, tend to militate against the practices of conflict transformation. Social media algorithms steer us towards the extremes of reactivity, and away from deep engagement and listening. Social media use teaches us to attend to compelling punctuations of imagery and assertion, rather than to attend to whole people and holistic realities in their complexity.
My own personal choice has been not to use social media, and not allow it as a parent, for these and many other ethical and socio-political reasons. But for most people who will continue to use social media, for which there are also many good reasons, the main thing is to never let scrolling time overtake in-person encounter time. Spend more hours each day and each week encountering other human beings in person – especially those who are different from you – than you do online, scrolling past people you can so easily dismiss, stigmatise, and misunderstand. If you form good habits of attending to people in person, you can take these with you into your social media use.
If participants take one key insight from this workshop, what should it be?
When I teach a kid's version of this workshop on the Schools Days of the Festival, I put it this way: Disagreement is like spice. There are definitely forms of spice that are too spicy, like there are dangerous forms of disagreement that require formal intervention, so people don't get hurt. But if we didn't have any spice, our food would be boring and bland. The right kind of spice, handled well, is what makes our food interesting and enjoyable. Likewise, a life without disagreement would be a life without difference; boring, bland, and stagnating. A life full of good disagreement is a life of learning, growth, and mutual flourishing.
"We disagree because we are different, and difference is a good thing, so long as we disagree well and use our power appropriately."
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