Wolfgang Dietrich (born 13 September 1956 in

Tyrol Tyrol (; historically the Tyrole; de-AT, Tirol ; it, Tirolo) is a historical region in the Alps - in Northern Italy and western Austria. The area was historically the core of the County of Tyrol, part of the Holy Roman Empire, Austrian Emp ...

) is an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n peace researcher and political scientist. Dietrich was educated in

and

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

and received a Ph.D. in

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

and

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to ...

at the

University of Innsbruck The University of Innsbruck (german: Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck; la, Universitas Leopoldino Franciscea) is a public research university in Innsbruck, the capital of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol, founded on October 15, 1669. ...

in 1980 and an LL.D. at the same university in 1984. In 1990 he was promoted to the degree of "Universitätsdozent" (Adjunct Professor) in

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and ...

according to the Austrian Law of Higher Education (UOG).2015, the University of Innsbruck promoted him to an Honorary Professor. He was the chairperson of the Austrian section of

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and s ...

from 1989 to 1991, director of the European Peace University from 1995 to 1998, and academic director of the Austrian Institute for Latin America from 1995 to 2007 before he committed full-time to the development of Peace Studies Innsbruck. There, he was the founding director of th
MA Program in Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation
in 2001 and founder of the

Innsbruck School of Peace Studies Since 2001, the ''Innsbruck School of Peace Studies'' has been developed by Wolfgang Dietrich and his team at the University of Innsbruck. Austria. In 2008 the UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies has been established. In 2017 the team of rectors founde ...

, a groundbreaking epistemological approach to peace and conflict research. In 2017 he became head of the then newly founde
Unit for Peace and Conflict Studies
2018 co-director of the Research Center for Peace and Conflic
INNPEACE
at the University of Innsbruck. He retired from all these positions in 2021 in the context of severe critiques. The University of Innsbruck declared in October 2021, shortly after the retirement of its chair, that despite its original name ''MA Program'', the "''Course'' 'Lehrgang''in Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation" should be given a clearer institutional form, with a regular academic title to obtain ("Regelstudium"). Since 2008, he is UNESCO Chairholder for Peace Studies and a member of the Austrian UNESCO commission. In 2015, the Association of the Alpine States (ARGE ALP) appointed him Peace Ambassador of Alpine Region. Dietrich began his career as an academic peace worker in Central America and Latin America, later in India, Eastern Africa, and Southeast Asia. He worked and taught also at many Universities in the US and Europe. During the last years of his career, he worked mainly in the Middle East. His focus is applied conflict transformation, peace philosophy, cultures of peace, and peace education. His about 300 academic writings have been published in many also non-European languages.

Research focus

Dietrich's research focuses on the history of peace studies, peace and development, peace and

postmodernity Postmodernity (post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist ''after'' modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the ...

, cultures of peace, theories of peace, peace and

world system theory World-systems theory (also known as world-systems analysis or the world-systems perspective)Immanuel Wallerstein, (2004), "World-systems Analysis." In ''World System History'', ed. George Modelski, in ''Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems'' (E ...

, as well as the contributions of humanistic

psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...

to peace studies. The best known and most quoted of his early contribution to peace studies is the ''Call for Many Peaces,'' published in 1998 and republished in 2006. Therein Wolfgang Dietrich dissolves the notion of a homogenous, universal peace in the

plural The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...

ity of the many peaces and thus establishes an approach that is founded on respect towards the Other. Peace is thus thought of in the sense of "many peaces" as a noun with a plural. He asserts that what peace means differs on closer inspection from culture to culture, and the connotations and

etymological Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words a ...

interpretations of the concept of "peace" do not coincide in different

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s but are an expression of the plurality of

worldview A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural ...

s and

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...

s of the societies speaking those

languages Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

. Since 2008 Dietrich has distinguished between the energetic, moral, modern, post-modern, and trans-rational understanding of peace. He advocates the so-called trans-rational approach, which combines the mechanistic understanding of modern peace with those cosmovisions which are energetically oriented towards the establishment and maintaining of harmonious relations between

humans" \n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...

nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

, and the

cosmos The cosmos (, ) is another name for the Universe. Using the word ''cosmos'' implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity. The cosmos, and understandings of the reasons for its existence and significance, are studied in ...

. From there, he derives his culture-sensitive call for an elective approach to conflict transformation, following here peace researchers such as Adam Curle or John Paul Lederach. Conflict work to him means facilitating the exploration and creation of new options by the conflicting parties instead of prescriptive conflict resolution by external experts. In his last book under the German title Der dies Das Frieden. Nachmerkungen zur Trilogie über die vielen Frieden (2021) he developed this approach further and argues now that peace should neither be considered an abstract essence, expressed in a singular noun as all modern European languages do, nor the relational plural that he advocated until then, but as interacting dynamics of the web of existence, expressed better in verbs - as numerous extra-European languages do. This approach has been didactically implemented and practically applied at the

.University of Innsbruck - Peace Studies
/ref> during his time as director. Nevertheless, in relationship to the extracurricular "''Course'' 'Lehrgang''in Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation", the central university administration said, shortly after the retirement of its original chair in 2021, and in the context of some public critiques, that it better should be changed to get an institutional academic form ("Regelstudium"). This approach has been didactically implemented and practically applied at the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies in his time as director. Nevertheless, in relationship to the extracurricular "Course ehrgangin Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation", the central university administration said, shortly after the retirement of its original chair in 2021, and in the context of some public criticisms, that it better should be changed to get an institutional academic form ("Regelstudium").

Controversy

In October 2021, shortly after Wolfgang Dietrich's retirement, there was a public controversy at the University of Innsbruck about his controversial methods as the former head of the Innsbruck ''Peace ''course. A report by Austrian public television (ORF) on October 13, 2021, states: "The ''Zeit im Bild'' has in its power reports from several graduates and a French guest professor who speaks of extreme dependency and psychological consequences; the former course director also crossed sexual boundaries during esoteric exercises." The three graduates of the course, that have been interviewed in the television report, relate about the "mental and physical violence" practiced there, and on the experience that Wolfgang Dietrich "sat right next to me and (began) to tell me something about my sexuality, it was a completely offensive, uncomfortable situation." As a result, occurred "depression" and "suicidal thoughts," that the graduate student had not known before. Due to these allegations, the management of the University of Innsbruck wrote to everyone who had completed the course in the last 20 years and asked those affected to come forward. According to the university, no evidence of sexualized assaults emerged from this call, nor had there been any indications of structural violence. However, the university's vice-rector for human resources acknowledged during a media briefing that there were indications from third parties that Dietrich was privately close and verbally insensitive. An independent investigation of these allegations, with external professional support, specialized in psychological and sexual harassment, as proposed in a similar case at the

University of Salzburg The University of Salzburg (german: Universität Salzburg), also known as the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (''Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg'', PLUS), is an Austrian public university in Salzburg, Salzburg municipality, Salzburg (state ...

, cf. ''Studierende brauchen dringend eine unabhängige Stelle, an die sie sich niederschwellig und anonym wenden können. Das fordern wir schon lange'
(Keya Baier, Vicepresident of the official Austrian Student Federation ÖH, in ''Salzburg24'', June 30, 2021)
never took place: the management of the University of Innsbruck, criticized for the role it did play, investigated and acquitted himself.

Selected bibliography

* ''Der die das Frieden. Nachbemerkung zur Trilogie über die vielen Frieden'', Wiesbaden, Springer VS, 2021. * ''Conviviality, Ego, Team and Theme Behavior in Transrational Peace Education'' in: Journal of Peace Education 16:3 (2019) Transrational Perspectives in Peace Education. pp. 252–273 aylor and Francis Online* ''Elective Conflict Mapping'', London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. * ''Elicitive Conflict Transformation and the Transrational Shift in Peace Politics '', London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. * ''Interpretations of Peace in History and Culture'', London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. * (Ed.): ''The Palgrave International Handbook of Peace Studies: A Cultural Perspective'', London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. * (Ed.): ''/Key Texts of Peace Studies/'', Wien, LIT Verlag, 2006. * ''Farewell to the One Peace'', in: Peace Review, Journal of Social Justice, San Francisco, Volume 14/1, 2002.

Sources

https://www.uibk.ac.at/peacestudies/dietrich {{DEFAULTSORT:Dietrich, Wolfgang Austrian pacifists Austrian political scientists Peace and conflict scholars 1956 births Living people University of Innsbruck alumni