Johan Galtung

Who is Johan Galtung?

Johan Galtung is a Norwegian sociologist, mathematician and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959, serving as its director until 1970, and established the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. In 1969 he was appointed to the world's first chair in peace and conflict studies, at the University of Oslo. He resigned his professorship in 1977 and has since held professorships at several other universities; in 1993 he had been selected as a Distinguished Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Hawaii where he taught until 2000. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1987.

Galtung is known for contributions to mathematics and sociology in the 1950s, political science in the 1960s, economics and history in the 1970s, macro history, anthropology and theology in the 1980s. He has developed several influential theories, such as the distinction between positive and negative peace, structural violence, theories on conflict and conflict resolution, the concept of peacebuilding, the structural theory of imperialism, and the theory of the United States as simultaneously a republic and an empire.