A brief history of the Peace Justice Conferences in Tvind

The Peace Justice Conferences are hosted by DNS – The Necessary Teacher Training College at the Tvind campus in Western Jutland, Denmark.  Other partners contribute to the planning and practical preparations of the conference.

The first conference was held in 2015, and there has been one every year ever since, even though the 2020 and 2021 conferences had to be held online for pandemic reasons.

Please find below a brief description of past conferences, and to access the archives please click their respective images.

Peace Conference 2015

The first conference was a one-day event which took place on 25 April 2015 and was simply called: Peace Conference 2015.

Key Note speaker Jan Øberg delivered a speech called “From militarism to conflict resolution and peace”.
Several Danish peace organisations presented their projects and experiences, “Aldrig mere krig”, “Fredsministerium” and “Fredsvagten” were among the most prominent.

Following the succes of the first conference, the hosts decided to turn it into a yearly tradition, to take place in the last weekend of April.

Peace Conference 2016: Stop Wars – Not Refugees

The second conference was held over three days, April 29th – May 1st 2016, under the headline: Peace Conference 2016: Stop Wars – Not Refugees.

The first day of the conference consisted of workshops on a number og subjects, and artistic expression, like music, action art and contemporary dance.

The second day of the conference was dedicated to speeches by Jytte Martinussen, Øyvind Wistrøm, Yassir al-Haj, Yonathan Goldsthein og Jonathan Ofir.

Key Note speaker Jan Øberg lectured on the state of the world: “Peace, War and Conflict. “The last day of the conference took place in Aarhus on Mayday, joining the demonstrations under the banner “Refugees welcome”.

Peace Justice Conference 2017: Learn | Act | Share

The third conference was held on April 28th – 29th 2017. By this time, the organisers had decided to change the name to Peace Justice Conference, since there can be no peace without social justice.

Again, Jan Øberg held the Key Note Speech.

Students from the participating schools and people from different organisations held workshops on a variety of topics – thus sharing their experiences.

Peace Justice Conference 2018: Meeting the Other

The fourth conference was held on May 11th – 13th 2018.

Students from the participating schools and people from different organisations held 25 different workshops on a variety of topics – thus sharing their experiences. 

Key Note speakers were:

• André Vltchek
• Kamal Ahamada and
• Maleeha & Rukshar Asif.

Peace Justice Conference 2019: Teach Peace!

The fifth conference was held on May 10th – 12th 2019.

Instead of a having few key note speeches, the conference had some shorter talks, respresenting different aspects of peace initiatives around the world.

There were twenty-six workshops spanning a broad range of topics from artful expression, dialogue exercises, eco-pedagogy and identity politics to nature, colonialism and solutions for an open future.

Peace Justice Conference 2020:
The New World Rises in the East

The sixth conference was held on 17 May 2020. It was a one-day online event which was hastily organised since all other plans had been cancelled because of  lock-downs due to the raging pandemic.

Peace researcher Jan Øberg talked about a topic which receives little or no attention in the West, namely China.

Peace Justice Conference 2021:
A series of lectures

The seventh conference was cancelled because of the pandemic.

Instead, DNS – The Necessary Teacher Training College took the initiative to launch a series of lectures and discussions in the autumn of 2021. The topics included nuclearism, militarism, the purpose of NATO and the “Belt & road” initiative.

Peace Justice Conference 2022:
Peace Research

As the first post-pandemic event, the Peace Justice Conference in 2022 was special indeed.

Being able to be together again inspired the hosts to create a conference where everybody was a participant and a creator. There were, of course, some speeches from activists and peace researchers, but the majority of the program consisted of a process we nicknamed “peace research”. The participants were divided into 4 groups to investigate 4 different topics:

1. Despite the Poor
2. Fighting against Climate Change
3. Fighting against Capitalism and
4. Fighting against Militarism and Nuclear Weapons

Peace Justice Conference 2023

“United in building utopias”

The 2023 conference took place over three days and was filled with workshops, keynote speeches, discussions, debates, art installations, opportunities for human connections, good food and music.

Keynote speakers were Ash Perrin from The Flying Seagull Project and climate psychologist Jessica Kleczka.

The conference also hosted 25+ workshops with a wide range of topics and activities.