Benjamin Peters

Benjamin Peters, PhD, is the Director of the University of Michigan Global Scholars Program and Faculty Associate at the University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. Prior to his work at the University of Michigan, Dr. Peters was Professor of Political Science, Dean of the School of International Liberal Arts, and Vice President of Miyazaki International University in Miyazaki, Japan. 

Dr. Peters is co-editor with Dr. Peter Verbeek of Peace Ethology: Behavioral Processes and Systems of Peace (Wiley, 2018). His articles, reviews, and book chapters on Japanese and Costa Rican politics, alternative defense, communicative practices of peace, and nuclear weapons abolition have also appeared in New Political Science (2009), Japan at War (ABC-CLIO, 2013), East Asian Integration Studies (2013), Nonkilling Security and the State (Creighton University Press, 2013), Motherhood and War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), The SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspectives (SAGE, 2016), Nonkilling Relations (Center for Global Nonkilling, 2024), and De Gruyter Handbook of Conflict Resolution and Peace (De Gruyter, forthcoming).

Dr. Peters is a past Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research & Education Institute and has served as a reviewer for the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics and for The Economics of Peace and Security Journal. Since 2013, he has been a continuing member of the Political Science Research Committee of the Center for Global Nonkilling, a member-group of the World Health Organization Violence Prevention Alliance, and he currently serves on the Board of Directors of ALPHA Education, an educational nonprofit in Toronto that operates the WongAvery Asia-Pacific Peace Museum, which he previously served as an Exhibit Content Reviewer.