Alain Tschudin is Professor of Peace Studies and Director of the International Centre of Nonviolence at the Durban University of Technology, South Africa. Prior to this he was Lead Consultant for the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa on the nexus approach to peace, development, human rights and humanitarian aid to fast-track the implementation of the SDGs in Africa. Alain served as Executive Director of a pan-African NGO dedicated to governance (2015-2020), during which time he was appointed as a Professor in the WITS School of Governance. He has deployed as a humanitarian in emergency coordination with UNICEF in conflict zones in Africa and the Middle-East and was Programme Coordinator for Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (2011-2014).

Alain has worked extensively with governmental, NGO and multilateral organisations on a range of themes: the social integration and economic participation of immigrants and ethnic minorities using ICT for the European Commission, child protection and migration with Save the Children International, and on xenophobia and refugee trauma. Alain has published diversely, most recently on Africa’s first Nobel Peace Prize winner, Chief Albert Luthuli, on climate action and planetary integrity, public participation for sustainable local peace, and on inter-cultural understanding between partners confronting violent extremisms. He has edited a volume on Gandhian principles Gandhi Now (2020) and a trilogy entitled Extremisms in Africa (2018-2020).

Prof. Tschudin holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Natal, South Africa, completed as a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Liverpool, an M.Phil. in Theology and Religious Studies and a Ph.D. in Divinity from the University of Cambridge, where he also served as a Swiss Academy Research Fellow. He has been a Visiting Fellow in the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland and was recently appointed as a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Since his election in 2022, Alain has served in a voluntary capacity as President of the Association Montessori Internationale, the global educational NGO founded by Dr Maria Montessori in 1929.