Stellan Vinthagen

Vinthagen holds a PhD (2005) in Peace and Development Research from University of Gothenburg. In his dissertation the religious framing of nonviolent action by the strategist of the Indian anti-colonial movement, Mohandas K. Gandhi, is reinterpreted with the help of modern social science and given a secular conceptualisation. He has written or edited eight books and numerous articles, among the most recent: Nonviolent Resistance and Culture, 2012 (with M. Sørensen) in Peace & Change, and Tackling Trident (by Irene Publishing).

He was between 1986-2000 one of the key organizers of the European Plowshares Movement, a movement that carries out nonviolent direct disarmament actions at military bases or arms factories. 1986 he took part in a disarmament action – Pershing to Plowshares – in which he together with three others used hammers and bolt-cutters to destroy a Pershing II launcher at the US nuclear base Mutlangen, in former West Germany. 1998 he again acted in a group – Bread Not Bombs – that tried to use hammers to ‘disarm’ a nuclear Trident submarine at a shipyard in the UK.

Since 2000 he has been an active participant in the global justice movement and the World Social Forum, and since 2010 a member of the Council of War Resisters’ International (WRI). He was one of the initiators of the Academic Conference Blockades 2007 at the Trident nuclear submarine base in Faslane, Scotland. as part of the ‘Faslane 365’ civil disobedience campaign (see Faslane Peace Camp).

During two blockades more than 50 academics from different countries and very different scientific disciplines, blockaded the entrance of the nuclear base, while conducting a normal academic conference, reading out their research papers, and discussing with students. Both conferences ended with police arrests. Vinthagen is also one of the initiators of the Swedish Ship to Gaza, a coalition member of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which in May 2010 tried to break the siege of Gaza with several ships bringing hundreds of humanitarian workers and desperately needed aid to the politically created humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

When the Israeli military killed nine of the participants and shot-wounded more than 30 others, the action became world news for long time after. Vinthagen was the coordinator of nonviolent action trainings for the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2011 and 2012. 2011 he was on the boat Juliano and blocked by the Greek Coast Guard, and in 2012, he was, together with others on board the ship Estelle while sailing on international water outside of Gaza, shot repeatedly by an electric gun and arrested by the Israeli navy. Since then he is deported and banned from Israel for ten years. The Freedom Flotilla is described by the UN special rapporteur Richard A. Falk as the single most important liberation action since the start of the occupation of Palestine. According to the Hamas West Bank lawmaker Aziz Dweik “The Gaza flotilla has done more for Gaza than 10,000 rockets.”

Vinthagen has been active in many different social movements since 1980 (environmental, migrant rights, anti-arms trade, peace, Palestine solidarity, animal rights, etc.). He has been an educator, organizer and activist in several countries, and has participated in more than 30 nonviolent civil disobedience actions.

Stellan Vinthagen (born October 13, 1964) is a professor of sociology, a scholar-activist, and the Inaugural Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he directs the Resistance Studies Initiative. He is also Co-Leader of the Resistance Studies Group at University of Gothenburg and co-founder of the Resistance Studies Network, as well as Editor of the Journal of Resistance Studies, and a Council Member of War Resisters International (WRI), and academic advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). His research is focused on resistance, power, social movements, nonviolent action, conflict transformation and social change. He has since 1980 been an educator, organizer and activist in several countries, and has participated in more than 30 nonviolent civil disobedience actions, for which he has served in total more than one year in prison.

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