Fellowship

John D Brewer is Professor of Post Conflict Studies in the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. He is Honorary Professor Extraordinary at Stellenbosch University (2017-). He was awarded an honorary DSocSci from Brunel University in 2012 for services to social science and the sociology of peace processes. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (2004), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008), a Fellow in the Academy of Social Sciences (2003) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (1998). He has held visiting appointments at Yale University (1989), St John’s College Oxford (1991), Corpus Christi College Cambridge (2002) and the Australia National University (2003). In 2007-2008 he was a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow. He has been President of the British Sociological Association (2009-2012) and is now Honorary Life Vice President, and has also been a member of the Governing Council of the Irish Research Council and of the Council of the Academy of Social Science. In 2010 he was appointed to the United Nations Roster of Global Experts for his expertise in peace processes. He is the author or co-author of sixteen books and editor or co-editor of a further six. His books include C Wright Mills and the Ending of Violence (Palgrave 2003), Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach (Polity Press, 2010), Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2011, 2013), Ex-Combatants, Religion and Peace in Northern Ireland (Palgrave, 2013) and The Public Value of Social Sciences (Bloomsbury, 2013). He is General Editor of the Book Series Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict and Co-Editor of the Policy Press Book Series Public Sociology. He was Principal Investigator on a £1.26 million cross-national, five-year project on compromise amongst victims of conflict, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, focusing on Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka. Two books appeared in 2018 from this research programme The Sociology of Compromise and The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding, both in the Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict Series. A third appeared in the Series in 2020 Ex-Combatants’ Voices: Transitioning from War to Peace in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka. He regularly teaches peace and reconciliation workshops in Sri Lanka and was active in the Northern Irish peace process facilitating the Faith in a Brighter Future Group of leading ecumenical churchmen and women. He has also been involved as a policy advisor on policing reform in South Africa and Northern Ireland. In 2013 he gave the Academy of Social Science Annual Lecture, in March 2014 the Annual Lord Dunleath Lecture, in April 2014 the Annual Lord Patten Lecture and in June 2014 the Annual David Stevens Memorial Lecture. In May 2014 he spoke at the Westminster Faith Debate on the motion that religion is a positive force in peace building and in 2016 at the British Academy Faith Debate on whether true religion is always extremist. He is a happily married practising Christian, with three children and five grandchildren.