ABSTRACT
Conflict and peace studies, as a distinct field of theory and practice, was established in the 1950s, mainly in the United States and Europe. It is a worldwide enterprise, linking academic institutions, government departments in many countries, a range of international and regional organisations and innumerable non-governmental initiatives. Given the multifaceted nature of human conflict, the field has from the beginning been multilevel and multidisciplinary. It has aspired to be multicultural. It has tried to combine theory and practice. As theory, it is analytic and uses quantitative methods and qualitative case studies. Conflict resolution specialists have for some time drawn on insights from other disciplines, including especially psychology, economics, anthropology and political science, to illuminate how knowledge and practice in all the core skills can be improved. Projects and programmes are evolving in ways that suggest that cyber-peace-making, and cyber-conflict resolution, are emerging to form one of the most exciting new areas for conflict resolution praxis.
