Douglas P. Fry

Dr. Fry is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Docent of Cross-Cultural Developmental Psychology at Åbo Akademi University in Vasa, Finland, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity at Columbia University. Fry earned his doctorate in anthropology from Indiana University in 1986. His fieldwork-based dissertation explored the socialization of aggression, childrearing practices, and conflict control mechanisms in two neighboring Zapotec communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. Fry has written extensively on aggression, conflict resolution, war, and peace while holding academic positions in the United States and Finland. Fry’s articles have been published in high-ranking disciplinary and interdisciplinary Journals such as Science, Nature: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, American Anthropologist, American Psychologist, Child Development, Common Knowledge, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Aggressive Behavior, Sex Roles, Current Opinion in Psychology, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, and others.

The thesis of Nurturing Our Humanity, one of Fry’s books co-authored with Riane Eisler (2019, Oxford University Press) is that the path to human survival and well-being in the 21^st century hinges on our human capacities to cooperate and promote social equality, including gender equality. About ten years back, Fry edited War, Peace, and Human Nature (2013, Oxford University Press) that includes chapters from biologists, psychologists, archaeologists, primatologists, specialists on hunter-gatherers, and other disciplines, that thoroughly explore and evaluate the human capacities for violence and peace. Fry’s Beyond War (2007, Oxford University Press) and The Human Potential for Peace (2006, Oxford University Press) are widely read and much cited works in anthropology and beyond. Fry also was a co-editor of Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies Around the World (2004, Routledge) and Cultural Variation in Conflict Resolution: Alternatives to Violence (1997, Erlbaum). He is currently working on an Advanced Introduction to Conflict Resolution (Edward Elgar Publisher) and an edited book with Geneviève Souillac entitled the De Gruyter Handbook of Conflict Resolution and Peace: Living Sustainably on a Shared Planet (De Gruyter).

Dr. Fry has been a member AC4’s Sustaining Peace Project since its launch in 2014. One of his ongoing research interests is on peace systems, clusters of neighboring societies that do not engage in war with one another. An open access article published in one of the Nature journals, “Societies within peace systems avoid war and build positive intergroup relationships,” explores some of the peace-promoting features of peace systems. Additional publications on peace systems will be available soon.