Our Client

The University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies is a leading center for the study of the causes of violent conflict and strategies for sustainable peace. Kroc Institute faculty contribute to peacebuilding efforts in all corners of the world, especially by conducting research designed to better understand the roots of war and violent conflict, strengthen peace processes, and advance human rights and justice.

The Kroc Institute offers undergraduate, master's, and Ph.D. programs in peace studies; Kroc Institute alumni have gone on to high-profile leadership roles at public and private sector humanitarian organizations such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, Habitat for Humanity, International Monetary Fund, and numerous others.

What They Needed

In 2008, Palantir partnered with marketing communication firm Lipman Hearne to relaunch the Kroc Institute’s website using the the open source Drupal content management platform. The Kroc Institute’s website not only includes information about its academic programs, research, faculty publications, and upcoming events, it also raises awareness of peacebuilding work done by Kroc Institute students, faculty, and alumni. The site also serves as a resource for those interested in pursuing a career in strategic peacebuilding and related fields.

In 2012, Palantir again partnered with Lipman Hearne to relaunch the Kroc Institute site with a refreshed design and upgraded content management platform. The site’s new design, created by Lipman Hearne, better highlights peacemaking projects and initiatives around the world as well as news and events. Visitors are now more easily able to connect and engage with the Institute via social media.

By moving from Drupal 5 to Drupal 7, the Kroc Institute was able take advantage of the the improved capabilities, enhanced administrative interface, and added security of the latest version. Plus, Drupal 7 will continue to receive community support and updates for years to come, ensuring that the Kroc Institute’s web presence is as “future-proofed” as possible.

How We Helped

Palantir was responsible for architecting and building the new site, as well as migrating content from the old version. As part of this process, we looked for opportunities to help streamline the creation and maintenance of site content.

To enable site administrators and content editors to have more control and flexibility over how content appears on the site, Palantir created tools to enable content blocks to be added to individual pages via that page’s content editing interface. This allows assigning content blocks with information about related news, events, books, and other content, to be a fully integrated part of the content creation process.

In addition to the vast administrative interface improvements native to Drupal 7, the site also supports some of the base functionality of Workbench, a suite of Drupal 7 modules developed by Palantir designed to make common administrative tasks easier.

The Upshot

The Kroc Institute’s new website increases awareness of the amazing work being done to promote peacebuilding initiatives around the globe and enables people to better connect and engage with students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The Institute’s small staff now has access to improved content administration tools that makes it easy to keep its audience well-informed and inspire others to pursue careers in strategic peacebuilding.