Johan Galtung

Galtung in discussion with Amy Goodman, 2012 Johan Vincent Galtung (24 October 1930 – 17 February 2024) was a Norwegian sociologist and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He was the main founder of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in 1959 and was its first director until 1970. He also 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 Oslo professorship in 1977 and thereafter held professorships at several other universities; from 1993 to 2000 he taught as Distinguished Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi. He was the Tun Mahathir Professor of Global Peace at the International Islamic University Malaysia until 2015.