Online Zoom Forum: Dag Hammarskjöld: The Spiritual, Ethical, and Social Vision in His Life and Work.
Date: Wednesday 28 January 2026.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Dr Thomas Clough Daffern:
Bio: Dr Thomas Clough Daffern is a philosopher, historian, peace studies expert, poet and religious studies specialist. He was awarded his PhD from the University of London for a thesis which explores the history of the search for peace, and which proposes a new field of historiography, Transpersonal History. He has taken initiations in many spiritual paths and runs the Commonwealth Interfaith Network. He is Director of the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy (IIPSGP) www.educationaid.net which works across many academic fields to bring together all those with an interest in and a commitment towards the study of peace, nonviolence and philosophy. Thomas taught at the Muslim College 1990-1993 & for the University of London, & University of Oxford 1993-2003. As House of Lords, Research Seminar Convenor (1992-2001) he worked with Lords and MP’s to establish an All Party Group for Peace and Conflict Resolution and co-chaired 35 meetings in parliament on peace policy. He has written over 60 books and is a published historian, philosopher, poet, and specialist in interfaith peace-making. He founded the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the Middle East (https://trcme.wordpress.com/) after many visits to Israel and Palestine and has friends on all sides of these agonising policy choices. He has consistently supported a two state solution and in 1991 he already called on Palestine to adopt a non-violent policy of resistance to stop giving Israel excuses to demonise and attack them. He is particularly interested in the religious and spiritual opportunities for peacemaking in the region and believes that between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Bahaism and Zoroastrianism etc. there should be treaties and declarations of non-violence. For this purpose he has drafted the first Interfaith Peace Treaty (www.Interfaithpeacetreaty.wordpress.com). He sees education as a key resource for peacebuilding and served as a front line philosophy and religious studies teacher for 20 years in the UK, and is also now running the International Delphic Academy to redefine what we mean by education as at root the process of transformational self-knowledge development. He also serves as Chair of the World Intellectuals’ Wisdom Forum (https://worldintellectualforumeurope.weebly.com).
Speakers:
Prof Henning Melber:
Title: Dag Hammarskjöld - A Cosmopolitan Internationalist.
Description: Dag Hammarskjöld personified the virtues of a Swedish civil servant, whose task was to work for the well-being of people in the public interest. As Secretary General of the United Nations, he was perceived as a secular Pope who considered the Charter as a Bible. His spiritual, ethical and social compass was a firm value system guiding him to serve as a duty which is not to be sacrificed for convenience of complacency sake. His integrity made him the Secretary General of those Member States, who had no seat at the table of the powerful.
Bio: Henning Melber is Director emeritus of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and an Associate with the Nordic Africa Institute, both in Uppsala/Sweden, an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria and the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. Author of Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations and the Decolonisation of Africa (London: Hurst 2019).
Dr Iuliu-Marius Morariu:
Title: Dag Hammarskjöld - Between Political Theology and Spiritual Autobiography.
Description: I will focus there on Markings and on the way how aspects of political theology can be found in a spiritual autobiography and about its particularities.
Bio: Iuliu-Marius Morariu is a PhD in Theology (Babe?-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, RO), and a PhD in Social Sciences (Angelicum Pontifical Universities in Rome, Italy). He studied in Kosice, Slovakia, Geneva, Switzerland, Rome, Italy, Belgrade, Serbian Republic, Graz, Austria, and Stockholm (online MA classes). He published, edited, coordinated or translated more than 60 books and 400 studies and articles. His concerns in DH life and work are related with the fact that he worked on the spiritual autobiography.
Dr Roger Lipsey:
Title: "Lord--Thine the day And I the day's.":
Description: This beautiful entry in his private journal, Markings (autumn 1958), speaks to Dag Hammarskjöld's linked dedications: to the Lord whom he strived always to remember, and to his brilliant work in the world as UN Secretary-General. In this brief exploration of his spirituality, I hope to share insights into its bedrock and enduring significance.
Bio: Roger Lipsey PhD is the author of Hammarskjöld: A Life and of Politics and Conscience: Dag Hammarskjöld on the Art of Ethical Leadership. His author's website, with a chronology and thoughts about his books, is rogerlipsey.net. Roger is currently writing a weekly online Substack, "Václav Havel for Our Time," for which free subscriptions are available at rogerlipsey.substack.com.
Prof Alanna O’Malley:
Bio: Professor Alanna O'Malley is Chair of Global Governance and Wealth and Head of Department, School of History, Culture and Communication at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. A historian of international relations, she is an expert on the United Nations, decolonization and the Global South. She is an ERC Laureate, having been awarded a Starting Grant as Principal Investigator of the project: ‘Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within, the Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'. She held the inaugural Chair in United Nations Studies in Peace and Justice at Leiden University until 2021. She has also published her work widely in leading journals including Humanity, International History Review, Past & Present and Journal of Cold War Studies, among others. She is a regular contributor to national and international media including Al Jazeera, BBC and CNN and TRT World.
Dr Noelia Molina:
Bio: Noelia Molina holds a BSc in Biomedical Sciences and MSc in Molecular Pathology. She worked for 17 years as a Medical Scientist (accredited by The Academy of Clinical Science and Laboratory Medicine in Dublin) in various laboratory disciplines in Dublin. She has been involved in spirituality studies since 2005 at Milltown Institute. In 2016, she completed her doctorate in Humanities (Spirituality) at All Hallows’ College, Dublin City University. Her doctoral dissertation investigated the transition to motherhood as spiritual process. Having worked in private practice as an accredited psychotherapist (NAPCP) since 2008, she has specialised in maternal mental health and had run therapeutic maternal groups. She has wide experience teaching counselling, psychotherapy and spirituality studies. She is the Director of the MA in Applied Spirituality in WIT.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Booking: By Paypal.
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Account Name: Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace
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Bank Address: Edinburgh Royal Mile Branch
Account Number: 06131159
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