Starting with founding the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) in Norway when he was only 29 years old, Johan Galtung became the 'founding father' of peace research in Europe and ultimately had a worldwide impact on our modern understanding of peace and the structure of conflict.
Quite properly regarded as one of the -- if not the -- key founder of conflict and peace research, especially in Scandinavia, Johan Galtung comes from several widely varied intellectual traditions, with links to mathematics, the physical sciences, medicine and sociology -- all of which give him an eclectic background from which to think and write about peace, conflict, and injustice and their transformation into what might become a better world.
As he describes in the interview, Dr. Galtung’s initial interest in the idea of serious research into the nature of peace and its necessary preconditions arose in the mid 1950s with his shocked discovery that there was none -- at least as a coherent body of findings. His eventual response was to begin by establishing the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), which under Galtung’s leadership, became the leading international center for systematic and scientific research into peace.
PRIO started to produce the Journal of Peace Research in 1964 as a vehicle for the publication of results from research in Oslo -- many of Galtung’s early and highly influential writings saw the light of day in its pages -- but the journal rapidly became a place in which quality research from all over Europe, “East” as well as “West,” could find a space. Together with the Journal of Conflict Resolution from the University of Michigan, these two publications became for the next twenty years, the chief academic means of exchanging ideas for the emerging field of conflict and peace research.
After PRIO, Galtung took up the new Chair of Peace Studies at the University of Oslo and solidified his reputation as one of the leading scholars in the new field. His subsequent writings are voluminous and always exciting and challenging. However, he also played a major role in the development of the International Peace Research Association and in bringing ideas and scholars from non-Western countries into the mainstream of peace research. He was thoroughly involved in the establishment of the United Nations University for Peace in Japan and partly as a result of building this network of institutions spends much time teaching new generations of students throughout the world.
Johan Galtung has also developed an enviable international reputation as a consultant and practitioner, always ready to apply theoretical and conceptual approaches to practical problems, ranging from boundary disputes to complex, multi-party conflicts within fragile states. Some of this he touches upon in the following interview, unfortunately far too narrow in scope to do full justice to all of the many activities that have made up the life and career of this central parent of the field.
JB/CRM
