Laboratory on Science and Dialogue for Peace

The Laboratory promotes an inclusive, open, and non-partisan vision of science. Scientific dialogue — free from prejudice and open to plural perspectives — can help transform conflicts into opportunities for learning, cooperation, and mutual understanding.

While science is inherently well suited to supporting peace processes, history has shown that scientific communities may also be influenced by dynamics of exclusion and power. For this reason, the Laboratory emphasizes reflexivity, ethical responsibility, and critical awareness as essential dimensions of scientific practice.

Science thrives through the construction of bridges rather than divisions: through spaces of encounter, exchange, and collaboration rather than confrontation or simplification. Scientific reasoning embraces complexity, values dissent, and engages constructively with divergent viewpoints in the pursuit of robust, balanced, and sustainable solutions.

Inspired by the work of Johan Galtung, founder of Peace Studies, the Laboratory adopts a conflict transformation perspective, advocating the shift from violent confrontation to peaceful engagement based on dialogue.

The social sciences play a pivotal role in preventing armed conflict and promoting a culture of peace. Research on democracy, education, equality, inclusion, historical memory, and legal frameworks provides essential tools for understanding the roots of conflict and for developing non-violent and inclusive responses.

The willingness to foster spaces for dialogue and constructive engagement should be strengthened and reaffirmed at a global level. From this perspective, collaborative initiatives such as international research networks and projects are particularly valuable, as they represent scientific practices that move in the opposite direction to the “distortion of relationships” brought about by war, as denounced in the Encyclical Fratelli Tutti.

This should not, however, lead to viewing the scientific community as a bearer of absolute truths, particularly with regard to the interpretation and value-based assessment of ongoing conflicts. All conflicts are inevitably influenced by affiliations, values, positions, roles, and by the broader zeitgeist — the spirit of the time — which shape the assumptions and orientations of scientific research. Science is a human activity that is socially and historically situated, deeply embedded in the social relations from which it arises, and inherently political — in Hannah Arendt’s understanding of vita activa, centered on action and public discourse.

Epistemological reflections developed over recent decades have tempered excessive confidence in the notion of fully neutral and objective knowledge. This has contributed to moving away from the search for a single, definitive answer to complex problems, while reinforcing the value of the processes through which knowledge and meaning are constructed within scientific inquiry. It also strengthens the role of scientific perspectives in shaping pathways for dialogue, particularly in reflections on peace. What emerges is a shared approach to knowledge production that values interdisciplinarity, welcomes multiple contributions, and remains open to continuous reassessment and integration of new evidence, hypotheses, and ideas.

Science has therefore been described as democratic, but also as humble in the highest sense of the term: free from claims of final authority, openly acknowledging doubt and uncertainty, and engaged in an ongoing process of inquiry and dialogue. Science informs action, but above all it encourages observation and attentive listening and, when it is itself carefully listened to, it opens the door to complexity, as modern physics has taught us.

The scientific approach is often inherently challenging. Alongside the search for solutions, it constantly raises questions about whether the identified research question is truly central and whether the chosen analytical perspective is appropriate. At the same time, reflection on the social relationships that give rise to scientific questions and problems is unavoidable. The social sciences — and educational research in particular — have developed the principle of action research, which emphasizes the close connection between the scientific community and the social reality, while positioning research itself as an agent of change and social innovation. By placing reflection on society and humanity at their core, the social sciences can make a decisive contribution to the development of active non-violence policies and to the promotion of a culture of peace.

Science and dialogue for peace is a book series of the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, Cultural Heritage (DSU), published by CNR Edizioni. It was created to explore “positive peace” as the set of political, social, economic, ecological and cognitive conditions that make a just and sustainable coexistence possible. With an interdisciplinary approach, the series encourages dialogue between forms of knowledge, disciplines and epistemologies, and treats research as a strategic resource for understanding, preventing and transforming conflicts, helping to build peaceful, fairer and more democratic societies. In a world marked by conflicts, systemic crises and rapid change, peace can no longer be seen only as a political or humanitarian goal: it calls for a solid scientific approach.

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