John Paul Lederach

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Dr. John Paul Lederach is Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana and concurrently Distinguished Scholar at Eastern Mennonite University. He has written widely on conflict resolution and mediation. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado and has been at the Eastern Mennonite University since 1990.

Dr. Lederach's theories of elicitive methods of conflict resolution have been influential in the fields of Political Science, Peace Studies, International Relations and Conflict Resolution. His works have been published widely in English and Spanish.

His academic work comes laden with examples from his experience in the field as a mediator, negotiator, peacebuiling practitioner, trainer and consultant. At international level, this has involved input into peace processes in, for example, Somalia, Northern Ireland, Nicaragua and Colombia. Within communities, his work has often been at the level of reconciliation within church and family.

Dr. Lederach is a committed Mennonite Christian, and as he explains in his 1999 book The Journey Toward Reconciliation (see below) his Christian faith has impacted both his thinking and application of non-violent solutions to conflict. In 2000, he received the Community of Christ International Peace Award.

[edit] Publications

Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures, Syracuse University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8156-2725-4
Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, U.S. Institute of Peace, 1997, ISBN 1-878379-73-9
The Journey Toward Reconciliation, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8361-9082-3
A Handbook of International Peacebuilding: Into The Eye Of The Storm, Jossey-Bass, 2002, ISBN 0-7879-5879-4
The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, Good Books, 2003, ISBN 1-56148-390-7
The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-517454-2