Professor Douglas P. Fry chairs the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. As a peace anthropologist, Doug Fry explores topics such as culture and peace, the origins of war, non-warring peace systems and their implications for human survival, peaceful societies, and war, peace, and human nature.
Fry is a passionate teacher and is known by his students for his sense of humor. He regularly weaves anecdotes and human interest tidbits into his lectures and writings on war and peace, making serious and complex topics readable and comprehensible. Fry believes that anthropology, literally the study of humankind, has important insights to contribute to understanding war and peace. "In our ever-more global 21st century, many of the challenges facing humanity demand broader contexts. The macroscopic perspective of anthropology, with its expansive time frame and culturally comparative orientation, provides unique insights into the nature of war and holds some concrete lessons for how to develop a more safe and peaceful world."
Of Fry's most recent book, "Nurturing Our Humanity," (2019, Oxford University Press) co-authored with luminary Riane Eisler, award-winning filmmaker, feminist, and philanthropist Abigail Disney says, " 'Nurturing our Humanity' upends the very core of our notion that humanity is, at heart, violent and greedy. Human nature holds just as much potential for caring and partnership as war and domination. Knowing that changes everything."
Fry's book "War, Peace, and Human Nature" (Oxford University Press) brings together renowned scientists and scholars from different fields to focus on war and peace. Fry also is the author of "Beyond War" (2007, Oxford University Press), "The Human Potential for Peace" (2006, Oxford University Press) and co-editor with Graham Kemp of "Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies Around the World" (2004, Routledge) and co-editor with Kaj Björkqvist of "Cultural Variation in Conflict Resolution: Alternatives to Violence" (1997, Erlbaum).
Over his prolific career, Fry has written extensively on aggression, conflict, and conflict resolution in journals such as "Aggressive Behavior," "American Anthropologist," "Bulletin of Peace Proposals," "Child Development," "Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research," "Sex Roles," among others. In 2012 and 2013 he has authored and co-authored with Patrik Söderberg articles in the leading journal "Science" titled "Life without War" and "Lethal Aggression in Mobile Forager Bands and Implications for the Origins of War."
Fry regularly co-authors with his spouse, Geneviève Souillac, who is also a professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at UNC-Greensboro. They make presentations on peacemaking in the USA, Europe, Japan, and beyond. Souillac and Fry are currently working on a book dealing with human survival in the Anthropocene.
Fry passionately believes that humans can create a more peaceful and just world and urges people from all cultures to work toward that mutual, necessary, and life-enhancing goal. Fry's ability to make complex topics interesting and to explore the serious subjects of war and peace with a blend of realism and hopefulness has received praise from luminaries such as Jeffrey "End of Poverty" Sachs, Frans "Age of Empathy" de Waal, and Robert "A Primate's Memoir" and "Behave" Sapolsky. In his spare time, Fry enjoys traveling, hiking, cooking (and, especially, feeding), socializing and grooming with other primates, and engaging in occasional bouts of playfighting -- ususally of the verbal kind.
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