A little bit about the origins of EuPRA
The establishment of the European Peace Research Association (EuPRA) occurred during a convening in Groningen on December 16, 1988. The decision to recognize EuPRA as a regional subsidiary of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) transpired during the IPRA General Conference in Groningen on July 5, 1990. Official constitution of EuPRA under the legal purview of the Federal Republic of Germany happened on December 1, 1990, with the association's seat set in Tampere, Finland.
EuPRA's leadership through the 1990s consisted of former presidents Hakan Wiberg from Sweden and Judit Balazs from Hungary. In the 21st century, leadership roles were filled by Unto Vesa from Finland (2000-2004), Riikka Kuusisto also from Finland (2004-2008), and Nesrin Kenar from Turkey (2008-2012). The presidency was later held by Daniela Irrera, and in 2022, at the EuPRA Conference in Tampere, Ilaria Tucci was elected as President by the association's members. Secretarial positions were held by Karlheinz Koppe of Germany and Attila Fabian of Hungary over the last two decades.
To date, EuPRA has convened 12 international conferences. The inaugural event, themed "Change and Continuity in European Peace Research," was hosted in Florence, Italy, in November 1991. Successive conferences were held in Budapest, Hungary in 1993, and Twente, The Netherlands in 1998. For the fourth gathering in 2002, the European peace research community convened in Schlaining, Austria to discuss "Europe as a Peaceful Power."
In 2007, the fifth conference explored "Challenges of Democracy and Peace in Europe" in Sakarya, Turkey. The subsequent conference, named "Bridging Divides: European Peace Architecture of Integration and Engagement," was held in Tirana, Albania in 2009. In 2011, Tampere, Finland, served as the venue for discussions centered on "Europe and the World."
In 2013, the theme "Building Positive Peace in Europe and Its Neighborhood" was tackled in Famagusta, North Cyprus. Tromsø, Norway, was the site of the 2015 conference titled "The Framing of Europe: Peace Perspectives on Europe’s Future." The 2017 meeting, themed "Peace and Conflict Studies from the Margins to the Center," took place in Schwerte, Germany. Most recently, the conference titled "Peace in Difficult Times: Challenges Europe and the World Face" was held in Catania, Italy in 2019.
The 12th conference of EuPRA was held in Tampere, Finland, from 1 to 4 June 2022. The conference's topic was Empowering Peace: The role of civil society in peacebuilding and conflict transformation.