Crowd Sourcing for Galtung’s Biography

JOHAN GALTUNG MEMORIAL, 29 Sep 2025

Tor Egil Førland – TRANSCEND Media Service

The death of Johan Galtung on 17 Feb 2024 at the age of 93 left a void at the heart of peace research. A never tiring critic of direct and structural violence—concepts he hammered out in the Sixties and refined over the next decades—and a cornucopia of creative ideas for overcoming apparently ossified conflicts by transcending physical or mental trenches, Galtung’s pride of place among the parents of the field of peace research is undisputed. His voice weakened during the 2020 covid-19 pandemic and never regained its strength but his most important concepts remain, as do institutions he was instrumental in setting up: The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in 1959; its Journal of Peace Research and Security Dialogue (formerly Bulletin of Peace Proposals) in 1964 and 1970 respectively; the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), also in 1964; and the TRANSCEND network, spreading from 1993 onwards into various branches including TRANSCEND Media Service.

In 1969, the Norwegian Parliament created the world’s first chair in Conflict and Peace Research for Galtung. It is perhaps indicative of how important he was as a person (and also of a concomitant institutional fragility) that the professorship was transformed and absorbed by political science a few years after he left University of Oslo in 1977. Waving goodbye to Norway and the safety as well as the chores of a university chair, Galtung spent the second half of his life as a traveling salesman of his brand of peace research, peacemaking, and peace building. Moving ever further away from his empirical roots, he branched out into (deep) culture, religion, and happiness studies, one of his latest publications being the 2014 Seven Ways to Happiness [in Norwegian only: Syv veier til lykke]. On his never-ending speaking tour around the world, he picked up guest professorships on all continents as well as a dozen honorary doctorates and other awards. After leaving Oslo, however, he never again had a permanent position. He would not let himself be fenced in, neither disciplinary nor institutionally.

Galtung’s brilliance, his brazen critique of authorities—in particular U.S. (empire) authorities and their allies—and his arrogance gave him enemies as well as fans. He was generous to admirers and often also to other scholars whether they agreed with him or not but he could also be hurting in his disdain of detractors. His appetite for praise seemed insatiable and led him to praise himself along with others. Lauded by parts of the peace movement and acclaimed, though not uncritically, by peace researchers, Galtung was sidelined and sometimes ridiculed by those who bore the brunt of his critique, such as U.S. elites and Zionists. Never prone to retract, he would at times be exposed to counterattacks. Controversial to the end, Galtung is surely worthy of a biography.

With a background in the peace movement as conscientious objector and subsequently research fellow at PRIO, being trained as Cold War historian and having spent a decade studying the radical Sixties movement, I am devoting three years of my professorship in history at the University of Oslo to writing Galtung’s biography. There are autobiographical essays in Johan Uten Land [John Lackland], published in Norwegian in 2000 and translated into Finnish, German, Spanish, and Romanian but a scholarly biography is missing. There is also a dearth of records from the second half of his life, which is why I reach out to people who cooperated with him after he left the professorship in Oslo in 1977.

Letters and other documents, recollections, and reminiscences that might help me put the puzzle together and get a clearer picture of Galtung’s life and achievements are much appreciated, as are names of people I should talk to. (I have a list of interviewees but there is room for more.)  Please send me an email at t.e.forland@iakh.uio.no and be part of the “crowd sourcing” for my biography of a man pivotal in not only creating peace research but Transcending it as well.

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Tor Egil Førland – Professor of History, University of Oslo; Affiliate Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO); Scholar in Residence, Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University, USA. https://www.hf.uio.no/iakh/english/people/aca/history/tenured/teforlan/index.html

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 29 Sep 2025.

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