Nigel Young, now mainly based in Yorkshire, Northern England, has been active in transnational peace activity for at least a half century.

 

He is presently Editor-in-Chief of the 'Oxford International Encyclopedia of World Peace' (a four-volume reference work) for which he won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is also active in the Balkans Peace Park Project, UK (B3P).

 

His several degrees are from Oxford University (1961, 63) and the University of California at Berkeley (1969, 1976). He has authored numerous publications including six books (two co-authored), and edited or co-edited others. A co-founder of the first Peace Studies department in Britain (Bradford, 1973/4), he was also the first endowed Peace Studies Chair-holder in the USA. As Professor of Peace Studies he was director of one of the earliest university Peace Studies Programs in North America (Colgate University, New York 1984-2004) where he retains the title of Research Professor.

 

Having helped start CND at Oxford (1958-61), his first major international peace work was as the London Organizer of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (1961-63). He has held academic positions in sociology, politics and peace studies, at over a dozen universities and colleges worldwide, and was a Senior Peace Research fellow in Oslo, Norway (1981-84). Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s he was active in war-resistance movements and this was the topic of his PhD research. He also wrote a key book on the New Left (1976).

 

Married to the distinguished author, anthropologist and ethnographer, Antonia Young, former Chair of B3P, they share interests in the former Yugoslavia and Albania. They have four grown-up daughters.

 

Professor Young is currently working on books on Historical Memory as related to peace, and the community basis of resistance.