Peace and conflict studies is a social science field that identifies and analyses violent and nonviolent behaviours as well as the structural mechanisms attending social conflicts with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition. A variation on this, peace studies (irenology), is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, de-escalation, and solution of conflicts by peaceful means, thereby seeking 'victory' for all parties involved in the conflict. This is in contrast to war studies (polemology) which has as its aim on the efficient attainment of victory in conflicts, big and large by violent means and to the satisfaction of one or more, but not all, parties involved. Disciplines involved may include political science, geography, economics, psychology, sociology, international relations, history, anthropology, religious studies, and gender studies, as well as a variety of others. Johan Galtung is widely considered "the principal founder of the discipline of peace studies".

Bernard Lafayette Jr. (born July 29, 1940, in Tampa, Florida) is a longtime civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. He played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma, Alabama, voting rights campaign; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely throughout the 1960s movements with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the American Friends Service Committee.

Lafayette's parents were Bernard Lafayette, Sr., and Verdell Lafayette. Lafayette spent much of his childhood in Tampa, Florida, but also lived in several other places, as his father was an itinerant laborer. His family spent two years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his sister Rozelia was born. Philadelphia was where the young Bernard first lived in an integrated community.

As a young man at the age of twenty, Lafayette moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and enrolled in the American Baptist Theological Seminary. During the course of his freshman year, he took classes in nonviolence at the Highlander Folk School run by Myles Horton, and attended many meetings promoting nonviolence. He learned more about the philosophy of nonviolence as lived by Gandhi, while taking seminars from activist James Lawson, a well-known nonviolent representative of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. He was the first black South African Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa).

Tutu has been active in the defense of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign for the oppressed. He has campaigned to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986; the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987; the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999; the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2005; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Tutu has also compiled several books of his speeches and sayings.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born in Klerksdorp, Transvaal, the second of the three children of Zacheriah Zililo Tutu and his wife, Aletta, and the only son. Tutu's family moved to Johannesburg when he was twelve. His father was a teacher and his mother was a cleaner and cook at a school for the blind. Here he met Trevor Huddleston who was a parish priest in the black slum of Sophiatown. "One day," said Tutu, "I was standing in the street with my mother when a white man in a priest's clothing walked past. As he passed us he took off his hat to my mother. I couldn't believe my eyes – a white man who greeted a black working class woman!"

Johan Galtung (born 24 October 1930) is a Norwegian sociologist and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959, serving as its Director until 1970, and established the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. In 1969 he was appointed to the world's first chair in peace and conflict studies, at the University of Oslo. He resigned his professorship in 1977 and has since held professorships at several universities around the world. Galtung is a prolific researcher, having made contributions to many branches of sociology. He has published more than 1000 articles and over 100 books.^{[non-primary source needed]} He was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in 1987,^{[citation needed]} and has received many other accolades. He is currently a resident of France and the United States.^{[citation needed]}

Galtung is known for contributions to mathematics and sociology in the 1950s, political science in the 1960s, economics and history in the 1970s, macro history, anthropology and theology in the 1980s. He has developed several influential theories, such as the distinction between positive and negative peace, structural violence, theories on conflict and conflict resolution, the structural theory of imperialism, and the theory of the United States as simultaneously a republic and an empire.