Director
Stein Tønnesson
EXPERTISE
- The East Asian Peace
- Nationalism and national identity
- Revolution and war in Vietnam
- Disputes in the South China Sea
- Armed conflicts in Myanmar
Stein Tønnesson is the Director of the Toda Peace Institute. He is research professor emeritus at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and associate editor for Asia in the Journal of Peace Research. His areas of research are peace in East Asia, nation-building in Southeast Asia, conflict in the South China Sea, revolution and war in Vietnam, and the role of social media in Myanmar’s internal armed conflicts. During 2011–17 Professor Tønnesson led the East Asian Peace programme at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, from which he published the monograph Explaining the East Asian Peace (NIAS Press 2017) and contributed to Debating the East Asian Peace (Bjarnegård and Kreutz, eds., NIAS Press 2017). During 2018–20 he led a project on Social Media in Armed Conflict, in partnership with the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security (MIPS). He co-authored two articles from that project: ‘Non-inclusive ceasefires do not bring peace: findings from Myanmar.’ Small Wars & Insurgencies, 33(3), 2022: 313–349; and ‘Pretending to be States: The Use of Facebook by Armed Groups in Myanmar.’ Journal of Contemporary Asia, 52(2), 2022: 200–225. His most recent book was a Norwegian-language history of the Vietnam War: En kort introduksjon til Vietnamkrigen (Cappelen Damm 2023).