This open access book explains how PRIO, the world’s oldest peace
research institute, was founded and how it survived through crises. The
Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) is the world’s oldest independent
peace research institute. In this book, a great number of its
researchers and associates, including Johan Galtung, Ingrid Eide, and
Mari Holmboe Ruge, who founded the institute back in 1959, tell the
stories of their roles in inventing and developing peace research. They
reflect on their personal experiences with peace and conflict, tell what
drove their peace engagement, and discuss the balance sought in the
field between the cold dictates from academic rigor and the hot pursuit
of peace, a desire for research to make a positive difference. Most of
the chapters are interviews where one colleague interviews another. Some
are self-reflective essays, while others are memorial essays written
about a peace researcher who has passed away. Taken together, the book
presents a lively picture of a thriving world-leading research
environment and a wealth of conflicting or mutually reinforcing
perspectives on war, violence, conflict, conflict management and
resolution, negotiations and mediation, peacemaking, peace building, and
the contested concept of peace.