Kyiv

Mosul

Uniform November: Peacebuilding through Place, Memory, and Adaptation

Uniform November is a peacebuilding consultancy rooted in the belief that architecture, space, and memory are powerful tools for resilience and recovery after conflict.

Founded by a former UN staff member with years of experience working alongside NGOs, civil society, and international organizations, we bring deep insight into the strategies, communications, and practices needed to support communities living with the legacies of violence.

We believe that peacebuilding must begin in war. It cannot wait for silence or stability. It has to be shaped in the very conditions of violence, breathing the same air as the people it claims to serve, air choked with drone buzz, sirens, distant shelling, bad bread lines, and flickering generators.

Our work combines consultancy, training, and original research with critical reflection on how societies adapt to conflict, displacement, and trauma. From heritage reuse to housing, land, and property (HLP) solutions, from mapping sites of violence to developing trauma-informed approaches to memorialisation, we focus on practical interventions that strengthen social cohesion and reduce the risk of renewed violence.

Ukraine: Peacebuilding in Real Time

Uniform November has been working in Kyiv, engaging with those shaping peacebuilding under the direct pressures of war. This work goes beyond cultural heritage, it is about understanding how societies improvise resilience while under fire, and how peace must be crafted in parallel with survival.

Our research and fieldwork there has included dialogue with:

Civil actors searching for and recovering the missing from battle lines
Private security operatives and emergency responders
Psychologists and trauma support providers
Housing, land, and property (HLP) specialists navigating displacement and return
Civil alliance group founders shaping collective responses to crisis
Journalists and researchers documenting violence and resistance
Military commanders and activists balancing survival with long-term vision

These encounters inform both our practical consultancy and our research outputs, grounding our conviction that recovery and reconciliation are not abstract ideals but lived processes forged in conditions of exhaustion, scarcity, and danger. The lessons drawn from Ukraine deepen and expand our global work on post-conflict recovery.

What We Do

Heritage Reuse: Breathing new life into buildings and cultural landmarks damaged by war, enabling communities to reconnect with their histories while shaping their futures.
HLP Solutions: Addressing complex housing, land, and property challenges faced by displaced populations to support return, resettlement, and recovery.
Memorialisation & Trauma-Informed Practices: Exploring how memory and place shape recovery, and helping communities create spaces that acknowledge violence without being trapped by it.
Research: Conducting original field-based and theoretical research into peacebuilding, recovery, and resilience — from mapping sites of violence to documenting everyday practices of survival, adaptation, and social cohesion.

Our Partnerships and Track Record

We have collaborated with UNESCO, ICCROM, the British Council, UN-Habitat, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and The HALO Trust, alongside grassroots groups, military stakeholders, and local leaders in Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, and beyond.

Key contributions include:

Designing an urban park for youth in Mosul on land once occupied by ISIS.
Mapping sites of violence in Mosul and Tal Afar with IOM’s MHPSS unit.
Conducting national HLP assessments to support IOM’s resettlement strategies.
Training local and international staff on post-conflict memory, persecution, and place.
Supporting UNESCO and ICCROM’s Revive the Spirit of Mosul project, empowering Iraqi architects and engineers to reuse cultural landmarks.

Why Uniform November?

We don’t see peacebuilding as a template, it’s a process that requires sensitivity, creativity, and honesty. Our approach draws on years of fieldwork, policy expertise, and research to help organizations and communities navigate the complexities of recovery.

Through our writing, consultancy, and partnerships, we aim to deepen understanding of how the built environment, cultural memory, and everyday survival can contribute to stability, dignity, and peace.

Uniform November exists to ask difficult questions, share critical insights, and design practical strategies for recovery and resilience.

Heritage & Memories of Violence

IDP & HLP

Urban Recovery

About Uniform November

Uniform November was launched by Frazer MacDonald Hay in 2016. Since then, it has grown into a consultancy and research platform that connects practice, theory, and lived experience of conflict.

Our work is rooted in field engagement, critical research, and collaborative learning. We share knowledge, exchange ideas, and develop tools that help communities, practitioners, and institutions adapt to violence, displacement, and the long process of recovery.

We offer training, workshops, and tailored educational programmes built around the themes that define our practice:

Peacebuilding in War: Understanding how peace must be shaped under fire, in conditions of fear, scarcity, and trauma.
The Fundamentals of Peacebuilding: Strategy, communication, and adaptation in volatile environments.
Heritage and Socially Significant Buildings: The adaptive reuse of cultural and everyday spaces, and their role in community identity.
The Power of Place: How architecture, memory, and space shape resilience and social cohesion.
The Everyday: Why ordinary spaces and routines matter in both conflict and recovery.
Housing, Land, and Property (HLP): Navigating the legal, social, and political challenges of displacement and return.
Trauma, Memory, and Violence: Working with built environments imbued with difficult histories, silences, and contested narratives.
Cultural Heritage and Protection: Safeguarding heritage under threat, and rethinking its role in recovery.

Knowledge Sharing

Take time to explore the Uniform November Blog, our knowledge-sharing platform for developing collaboration, dialogue, and awareness across the peacebuilding and humanitarian fields. Here we publish reflections from the field, research insights, and thought leadership on recovery, resilience, and memory in conflict and post-conflict environments.

Articles

Frazer is a peace-building consultant and writer whose work explores the intersections of architecture, memory, and violence. He is the founder of Uniform November, a consultancy working internationally on post-conflict recovery. He has worked in Iraq, Ukraine, Mexico, and Indonesia with organisations including the UN’s International Organization for Migration, UNESCO, ICCROM, The Halo Trust, and a range of NGOs and universities in Norway, the UK, and the Netherlands. He holds a Master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of St Andrews and writes regularly on how everyday places carry the weight of war and resilience.

Frazer's Articles

Articles

Whose Heritage Is It, Anyway?

Archaeology of the Future: Finding Hope in Architecture

A Civilisation Does Not Die in a Night

Buildings, Memory, and Mediation

A Building Speaks Before Demolition

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Whose Heritage Is It, Anyway?

( French / Arabic ) When we talk about heritage, whose heritage are we really talking about? It’s a question that has stayed with me over the years of working in this field. Not as an abstract provocation, but as something that emerges repeatedly in practice, in projects, in conversations, and in the spaces between intention and reality. Heritage is often presented as an unquestionable good: something to be protected, celebrated, and passed on. And in many ways, it is. But

Archaeology of the Future: Finding Hope in Architecture

(Arabic Translation) This week, I watched something that left me unexpectedly hopeful. A profile of Lina Ghotmeh on the Arts in Motion , and I found myself, at times, genuinely giddy. Not because of spectacle. But because of recognition. Architecture as Orchestra In a recent piece I wrote, ( Recombination: The Missing Discipline in Architecture ) , I argued that architecture must move away from authorship and toward orchestration. Listening to Lina Ghotmeh speak, I heard tha

A Civilisation Does Not Die in a Night

Image: IDP Camp 2017 Iraq. by Frazer Macdonald Hay Click here for Arabic Text Much has already been said in response to recent political rhetoric about the destruction of civilisations. Most of it is immediate, reactive, and quickly absorbed into an already saturated discourse.This piece takes a different position, grounded not in reaction, but in the experience of what happens when cities are destroyed, cultures are targeted, and people are left to rebuild what remains. When

Buildings, Memory, and Mediation

Exploring peacebuilding as a lens for adaptive reuse I have been thinking about the relationship between peacebuilding and adaptive reuse. At first, the connection may not seem obvious. One operates in the aftermath of conflict, working with fractured societies, contested narratives, and fragile relationships. The other is often understood as a technical or architectural process, adapting existing buildings for new use. But the more I work across both, the less separate they

“May the Force Be With You”: A Ukraine Air Alert

Every so often, at odd hours, or in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable day, it interrupts: an air alert from Ukraine. A reminder that somewhere, people are moving to shelter, pausing conversations, recalibrating their sense of time around the possibility of impact. And then after a while, just as abruptly, another message: “Attention. The air alert is over. May the force be with you.” The first time I heard it, I paused, not because of the alert itself, but because of th

Fractals of Violence: Why War Feels Uncomfortably Familiar

We like to believe that war happens elsewhere. In distant countries. Between governments and armies. Among people unlike ourselves, driven by forces we do not share. It is something we watch, analyse, condemn, but ultimately hold at a distance. This distance is comforting. It allows war to remain exceptional. It preserves the idea that violence, at scale, belongs to another realm entirely. But what if that distance is thinner than we think? The current war with Iran, like the

Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan: What Post-War Cities Must Learn About Memory

Ukrainian / Arabic Text Rebuilding After War: What Buildings Remember If you are planning the reconstruction of Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Syria (or any city emerging from war) there is a question that rarely appears in engineering briefs, donor frameworks, or architectural masterplans: What do the buildings remember? After conflict, the world mobilises to rebuild walls, roads, schools, and monuments. We measure recovery in square metres restored and skylines repaired. Yet in eve

The Scottish election question no party is answering: how do we build peace at home?

This is the first article of mine published by The Times , and I’m reposting it here in full. It argues that Scotland’s biggest peace-related risks are not military, but social and political, and that as elections approach, the absence of any serious discussion about peacebuilding at home should concern us all. Peace, as John Buchan reminded us, is the absence of fear. By that standard, it deserves to be treated as national infrastructure, not an afterthought....... John Buch

A Note of Thanks

An acknowledgement of the everyday acts of care and courage that rarely make headlines. This year I have spent time in places shaped by violence. I have walked past burned-out parliamentary buildings and destroyed police vehicles. I have stood among riot police by the hundreds. I have interviewed protesters and survivors of political violence. I have witnessed drone attacks and missile strikes. I have met former service personnel living with PTSD and life-altering injuries. I

The Uncomfortable Ordinary: Evil, Responsibility, and the Banality of Systems

by Frazer Macdonald Hay On 18 May, I published an article titled “ An Uncomfortable Framing of the Most Heinous .” It was an attempt to sit with an idea that resists moral comfort: that the perpetrators of the worst crimes in human history are rarely the monsters we want them to be. Last night, while watching Nuremberg (dir. James Vanderbilt), that discomfort returned with renewed force. The film centres on the uneasy relationship between Hermann Göring (played by Russell C

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““whatever is true for space and time, this much is true for place: we are immersed in it and could not do without it. To be at all - to exist in any way – is to be somewhere, and to be somewhere is to be in some kind of place”.

"No one therefor can conceive anything, but they must conceive it in some place”.

Owner:

F.M.H..... MLitt Peace & Conflict, Msc Architectural Conservation BA (Hons) Int. Architecture; MCSD, PgC TLHE

F.M.H is a Post-conflict, consultant - Specializing in Social Cohesion, DDR, Memorialization, Architectural Conservation, Housing Land and Property (HLP) issues.