Whyte, Alison

Whyte, Alison

Alison Whyte

1 March 2012Tool

What can we as individuals do to reduce the threat of violence – whether we encounter it in our daily lives, or whether we are concerned about the growing stockpile of nuclear weapons? Alison Whyte highlights some new on-line courses.

In 2005, a group at the University of Tromsø in Norway decided to create online training courses based on the ideas of Johan Galtung, the Norwegian sociologist who founded peace and conflict studies.

Professor Galtung defines peace as the capacity to handle conflict in a creative and empathic way. Galtung, who said that ‘violence is to peace what disease is to health’, believes that health professionals and others have a moral responsibility to address violence whenever they encounter…