Blog post archive
Displaying 24 blog posts in series PRIO Stories
October 2020
PRIO's State Feminist: Helga Hernes Interviewed by Kristian Berg Harpviken
Helga Hernes, interviewed by Kristian Berg Harpviken Helga Hernes coined the term ‘state feminism’ in the mid-1980s. At the time, suggesting that the state could be women friendly and an ally in the struggle for women’s rights was controversial. A decade and a half later, however, the term had become ...
Johan Galtung at 90: His Enduring Legacy to Peace Research in Oslo
The banner on the front page of PRIO’s Annual Reports and other publications proudly reads: Independent • International • Interdisciplinary These three key points for PRIO today, as well as other important features of contemporary peace research in Oslo, can be traced back to PRIO’s founder, Johan Galtung. He turns ...
Fresh Grounded Peace Research: Åshild Kolås Interviewed by Wenche Iren Hauge
Åshild Kolås, interviewed by Wenche Iren Hauge What I think we should do more of, as researchers, is to reach out to ordinary people, especially those who live in the places where we have travelled and gathered material. We used to call them informants, but they are actually participants. And ...
June 2020
Searching the Archives for a Missing Peace: Hilde Henriksen Waage Interviewed by Henrik Syse
Hilde Henriksen Waage, interviewed by Henrik Syse Between Israel and the Palestinians there has always been a huge asymmetry of power. There is a strong party and a weak party, and this has made it impossible to achieve a genuine peace. A nice little bridge-builder like Norway cannot easily change ...
Organizing for Peace: Mari Holmboe Ruge Interviewed by Kristian Berg Harpviken
Mari Holmboe Ruge, interviewed by Kristian Berg Harpviken Mari Holmboe Ruge’s life has been guided by the radical vision of a peaceful world, and a pragmatic conviction that robust organization is the key to achieving it. Mari played a critical role in PRIO’s first decade – analyzing, administering, advocating – ...
September 2019
A Migrant in the Common European House: Pavel Baev Interviewed by Stein Tønnesson
Pavel Baev, interviewed by Stein Tønnesson In the late 1980s, when I took part in drafting speeches for Mikhail Gorbachev underpinning his concept of an ‘All-European House’, one part of my work was to strive towards the elimination of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Nothing came out of it at ...
Creating a Third Space in the Cyprus Conflict: Mete Hatay Interviewed by Cindy Horst
Mete Hatay, interviewed by Cindy Horst Seeing victim become perpetrator, perpetrator become victim – seeing them change places depending on the situation – triggered a lot of questions in my mind… Whatever you imagine for the future, you always construct it from the past. And you cannot say, ‘let’s put ...
From Anarchy to Enlightened Absolutism? Sverre Lodgaard Interviewed by Hilde Henriksen Waage
Sverre Lodgaard, interviewed by Hilde Henriksen Waage What kind of journey was it, from life as a young researcher at PRIO in the 1960s, to directorial roles at PRIO and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s? How do Sverre Lodgaard’s life and work ...
August 2019
Peace Is More Than the Absence of War: Inger Skjelsbæk Interviewed by Cindy Horst
Inger Skjelsbæk, interviewed by Cindy Horst We focus a lot more on conflict than we do on what peace actually is. What is it that creates well-being? What is it that makes you feel at ease in your own skin, in your own life, in your own sociopolitical context? What ...
Managing Peace Researchers: Lene Kristin Borg and Grete Thingelstad in Conversation with Stein Tønnesson
Lene Kristin Borg and Grete Thingelstad in Conversation with Stein Tønnesson At a farewell lunch organized for PRIO Director Sverre Lodgaard at the end of his term in 1992, someone said that, under his leadership, PRIO had made a transition from anarchy to dictatorship. The speaker who said this expressed herself ...
The First Steps in the PRIO-Uppsala Connection: Peter Wallensteen Interviewed by Siri Aas Rustad
Peter Wallensteen, interviewed by Siri Aas Rustad PRIO was the engine of our Nordic peace research network. To ‘go to PRIO’ meant to be updated on the state of the art, to find out what was going on. The ideas generated could then be taken back home and used to ...
June 2019
The Lifelong Peace Advocate: A Portrait of Marek Thee (1918–1999) by Marta Bivand Erdal
Marek Thee (1918–1999), a portrait written by Marta Bivand Erdal The opposite pole of globalisation is fragmentation – the exclusion of a majority of the world’s population from the benefits of human development, generating a frustrated drive to defensive postures in violent and suicidal ideologies of nationalism, ethnicity and political-religious fundamentalism. Fault-lines ...
Congo and Structural Violence: Helge Hveem Interviewed by Per Olav Reinton
Helge Hveem, interviewed by Per Olav Reinton There is no country that illustrates large-scale violence better than the Democratic Republic of Congo. That is why the Nobel Peace Prize to Denis Mukwege is so well deserved, and why it also affirms the validity of structural violence as a concept. Even ...
A Historian’s Paths to Peace: Reflections from Stein Tønnesson
When looking back, I find nine paths I have explored in a quest to understand war and peace: War as war, war as horror, outbreaks of war, severity of wars, war endings, peace viability, regional transitions to peace, peace practices, and peaceful “utopian moments”, such as 1948, when the UN ...
May 2019
A Social Democratic Peace: Nils Petter Gleditsch Interviewed by Hilde Henriksen Waage
Nils Petter Gleditsch, interviewed by Hilde Henriksen Waage If you read my older publications, you will find very little about democracy, but a lot about equality, justice, and peace. The idea of a liberal peace, built on ties through international trade, became a major theme in peace research at the ...
Uniting Nations for Peace: Ingrid Eide Interviewed by Stein Tønnesson
When people ask what peace is, I urge them to tell me what they associate with war. They answer death, destruction, battles, arms, hatred, uniforms, suffering, fear, anxiety, loss, misery, and much else, all of which are bad and sad. Then I suggest that peace could be the opposite: life, ...
Inspiration from a Father: Johan Galtung Interviewed by Henrik Urdal
The Second World War had a lasting effect on me. Especially because my beloved father was imprisoned at Grini (west of Oslo). And we were informed that every time there was a British bombing, prisoners would be shot. So, every night the air raid siren went, my mother and I ...
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