Professor Molly Wallace

IAS Spotlight Series: Pacifism and Nonviolence

Portland State University

Dr. Molly Wallace teaches in Portland State University’s Conflict Resolution Program and serves as contributing editor of the Peace Science Digest. Her research and teaching interests include nonviolent action; unarmed civilian peacekeeping/protection (UCP); demilitarized security; conflict resolution/transformation; military desertion/defection; transitional justice, reconciliation, and peacebuilding; the relationship between weapons and protection/vulnerability; the legitimation of political violence; humanitarian negotiation; gender and global politics; and ethics of war and peace.

She is the author of Security without Weapons: Rethinking Violence, Nonviolent Action, and Civilian Protection (Routledge 2017), which explores nonviolent alternatives for civilian protection in war zones, and has published research in Critical Studies on Security, Global Society, and International Politics. In 2017, she was invited to deliver a keynote lecture at the Rethinking Pacifism for Revolution, Security and Politics conference at the University of Otago, Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Dr. Wallace earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown University and her B.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies from Mount Holyoke College. She has taught in the International Affairs and/or Political Science programs at Brown University, the University of New Hampshire, and Lewis & Clark College; volunteered as both a restorative dialogue facilitator and a community mediator; and worked for conflict resolution and international affairs NGOs in Washington, DC. More recently, she has also worked with the James Lawson Institute (as a facilitator) and the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (as an editor).