Professor, and Director
Center for Applied Conflict Management
Kent State University—USA

Dr. Patrick G. Coy is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Applied Conflict Management at Kent State University in the USA. As Center Director, he coordinates and oversees one of the country’s largest undergraduate degree programs in Peace and Conflict Studies, enrolling well over 1,000 students in its classes each academic year. The Kent State degree is an applied program, focused on teaching the skills of conflict management.

Patrick Coy teaches courses on mediation, public sector dispute resolution, negotiation, mediation, nonviolence, and human rights, including in the Conflict Analysis and Management track in the doctoral degree in Political Science at Kent State University. In addition, he has provided training seminars and various services in conflict resolution, mediation, and meeting facilitation to a variety of organizations and groups.

He co-authored the book, Contesting Patriotism: Culture, Power and Strategy in the Peace Movement. He has also edited eleven books: Social Conflicts and Collective Identities; A Revolution of the Heart: Essays on the Catholic Worker Movement; and nine volumes of Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. For full-text versions of many of these articles, go here: http://www.kent.edu/cacm/faculty/profiles_detail.cfm?profileitem=pcoy

Patrick Coy received the “Magnificat Award” from Marian University, the institution’s highest honor.  He also received the “Distinguished Teaching Award” of the College of Arts and Sciences at Kent State University, and the “Outstanding Published Article Award of 2008 from the American Sociological Association’s section on Peace, War and Social Conflict for his co-authored article examining the uses of the “support the troops” rhetoric in the US during wars from the Vietnam War to the Iraq War.

He serves as the Vice-President of the Cleveland Mediation Center’s Board of Directors and was formerly the national chairperson of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.  Coy has also served as a research fellow of the Albert Einstein Institution, and the executive director of the Lentz Peace Research Laboratory.

Dr. Coy’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Albert Einstein Institution, the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, the American Sociological Association, and by the University Research Council of Kent State University.

He has served as an international observer and as a member of Peace Brigades International team supplying nonviolent protective accompaniment services to threatened individuals during the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and he has long been active in the alternative dispute resolution movement as a mediator and as a scholar of the movement.

In 2010-2011, Professor Coy served as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Botswana, working on indigenous minority rights issues with the Research Centre for San (Bushmen) Studies.