Peter Wallensteen actually comes from a different generation than most of the other “Parents of the Field” that we have interviewed so far. In fact, he could equally be regarded as one of the talented young men and women who started in the field as one of the group gathered together in the early years of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) by Johan Galtung. Either way, he has been central to the development of Scandinavian peace and conflict studies and in linking this movement to individuals and institutions in the United States.
The Second World War had a long reach and Dr. Wallensteen describes in his interview the effects that an early visit to a small death camp in Poland had on his thinking about the Holocaust and about the need for sound research about peace and its maintenance. Starting his studies in Oslo he moved early to North America, working with Bruce Russett at Harvard and with Robert North at Stanford, who was then working on an escalation model to help to explain the outbreak of the First World War. Later visits to Michigan established a strong link with David Singer there and with the Correlates of War Project, although Wallensteen’s later projects, like the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, charted their own research course.
Dr. Wallensteen later became a central figure in the Swedish effort to have peace and conflict research accepted as a legitimate and worthwhile academic study in Sweden, pursuing the idea that it had to become part of a university if it was to survive. Eventually, success came with the founding of three programs in separate universities -- Lund, Gothenburg, and Uppsala -- with Wallensteen becoming the first Professor and head of a Peace and Conflict Research Department in Uppsala. Wallensteen’s account of the founding of that Department provides a fascinating insight for anyone who has ever engaged in efforts to establish a new field in an 'old' university.
The development of the Department at Uppsala and its masters and doctoral programs has occupied much of Dr.Wallensteen’s effort and attention during the past 25 years. He did, however, find time to write and contribute to the literature of the field during that period, focusing partly on the theory of peace and its achievements but also on developing Uppsala’s reputation for sound, empirical research through its Conflict Data Project. Currently, Dr. Wallensteen divides his time between the Department at Uppsala and the growing program at Notre Dame University where he is a Distinguished Visiting Professor.
