John Paul Lederach
John Paul Lederach is Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, 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 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 transformation. His approach is elicitive approaches to conflict intervention which he calls Conflict Transformation. 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, peacebuilding practitioner, trainer and consultant. At international level, this has involved input into peace processes in, for example, Somalia, Northern Ireland, Nicaragua, Colombia and Nepal. 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.
In February 2012, Dr. Lederach gave a lecture entitled "Compassionate Presence: Faith-Based Peacebuilding in the Face of Violence" at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Distinguished Lecture Series.
Publications
- Els anomenats pacifistes: La no violència a l'estat espanyol, La Magrana, 1983. (Catalan)
- 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
- From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding, 2000, ISBN
- 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
External links
- http://www.emu.edu/personnel/people/show/lederacj
- http://ecapc.org/articles/LederaJ_ChallengeTerror.asp
- http://kroc.nd.edu/people/directory/faculty/john-paul-lederach
- http://kroc.nd.edu/newsevents/news/peacebuilders-share-work-and-wisdom-apprentices-worldwide-485
- Lecture transcript and video of Dr. Lederach's speech at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice at the University of San Diego, February 2012