Bio
Kevin Clements
Professor Kevin Clements is Secretary-General of IPRA and Director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand.
He was previously Director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Queensland; Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA; Peace Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra; and Quaker United Nations Office, Geneva. He has also served as Secretary-General of International Alert in London and as President of IPRA, President of the IPRA Foundation and Secretary-General of the Asia Pacific Peace Research Association.
Alex Gusmao
Alex Freitas Gusmao was born in a mountainous subsistence farming region of East Timor some time in the late 1960s. He became an organizer in the underground student resistance whilst undertaking a Bachelors degree in Indonesia. Gusmao was a founding member of Timor Aid, East Timor's largest local non-government organization, and was its CEO for five years. He now lectures at the National University of Timor Leste, whilst maintaining a very active involvement in a range of educational and community development organizations around the country.
He has a degree in Community Development from Victoria University, Melbourne, and has published a number of papers on local forms of peacebuilding and governance in East Timor.
Sue Ingram
Sue Ingram is a consultant on governance and state-building, who has most recently completed a publication for the World Bank and UNDP on stat-building in fragile and conflict-affected states.
Over the last decade, Ingram has worked variously as: Principal Governance Adviser to AusAID; head of the Machinery of Government pillar of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands; Chief of Staff to the UN Mission in Support of East Timor; and district administrator and later Director of Transition Planning in the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor. Prior to this, Ingram was a senior executive in the Australian Government.
Oliver Richmond
Oliver Richmond is a Professor in the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, UK, and Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.
His publications include Liberal Peace Transitions (with Jason Franks, Edinburgh University Press, 2009), Peace in International Relations (Routledge, 2008), The Transformation of Peace (Palgrave, 2005/7), Maintaining Order, Making Peace (Palgrave, 2002), and Mediating in Cyprus (Frank Cass, 1998). He is one of the editors of the Review of International Studies, and editor of the Palgrave book series, Rethinking Conflict Studies.
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Encyclopædia Britannica Article
- liberalism
Political and economic doctrine that emphasizes the rights and freedoms of the individual and the need to limit the powers of government. Liberalism originated as a defensive reaction to the horrors of the European wars of religion of the 16th century (see Thirty Years' War). Its basic ideas were given formal expression in works by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, both of whom argued that the power of the sovereign is ultimately justified by the consent of the governed, given in a hypothetical social contract rather than by divine right (see divine kingship). In the economic realm, liberals in the 19th century urged the end of state interference in the economic life of society. Following Adam Smith, they argued that economic systems based on free markets are more efficient and generate more prosperity than those that are partly state-controlled. In response to the great inequalities of wealth and other social problems created by the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America, liberals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries advocated limited state intervention in the market and the creation of state-funded social services, such as free public education and health insurance. In the U.S. the New Deal program undertaken by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt typified modern liberalism in its vast expansion of the scope of governmental activities and its increased regulation of business. After World War II a further expansion of social welfare programs occurred in Britain, Scandinavia, and the U.S. Economic stagnation beginning in the late 1970s led to a revival of classical liberal positions favouring free markets, especially among political conservatives in Britain and the U.S. Contemporary liberalism remains committed to social reform, including reducing inequality and expanding individual rights. See also conservatism; individualism.
- liberalism on britannica.com
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