On Thursday, Jan. 29, School of Business ProfessorKen Fox held a book signing to celebrate his new book, “Perspectives on Conflict,” which was written in an attempt to combine multiple perspectives and theories in the field of conflict and conflict mitigation.

The event was held on two occasions, with an online book release on Jan. 28, which had 90 attendants from all over the world. Executive Director of Mediation Center Tobin Lay, who helped run both events, said that they decided to run an online event due to Fox’s connections around the world.

“He’s worked in the Middle East, in Europe, in Australia, so there’s a lot of people that are very interested in his work,” Lay said.

The online session reflected this, with attendants from India, Australia and Chile.

The in person event was a book signing held in Anderson Center, and featured a live violin performance. It was co-sponsored by Mitchell-Hamline School of Law’s Dispute Resolution Institute, of which Fox is a Senior Fellow, and the Mediation Center. The book signing had 40 to 50 attendants, according to Lay.

“In my view, it was not just about the book, it was a chance to celebrate three different communities coming together,” Fox said.

Fox considers the book to be a “passion project” of his, and said that people he’s worked with have been pushing him to write it for years.

“Colleagues I’ve been working with for the last number of years have been saying ‘Ken, just write the book,’” Fox said.

Fox has taught the Perspectives on Conflict course at Hamline as well as a similar class, Theory of Conflict, at Mitchell-Hamline, for over 25 years. While teaching the classes, he’s always had to use article clips to show different perspectives, as there hasn’t been an encompassing textbook in the field.

“They were helpful, but they were not written for students, like a psychology article would be written for psychologists, not someone who’s thinking of doing conflict work,” Fox said. What he needed was one book meant for people studying conflict that encompassed multiple perspectives.

While writing “Perspectives on Conflict,” Fox worked with multiple studies throughout the school, learning how each discipline dealt with and saw conflict. He worked with Professor Bonnie Ploger, a behavioral ecologist, and Professor Erik Asp, who teaches Brain and Behavior, as well as professionals in Gender Studies, Religion and more, in order to collect different opinions and perspectives.

“You have all of these different disciplines, all these different academic programs. Each one of those disciplines looks at the world in slightly different ways and that’s the same about how we try to understand conflict,” Fox said.

The book is set apart from others in the field by focusing on the why, rather than the how to, of conflict resolution.

“Most books try to provide skills – how do you do that, how do you do that, what if there’s an impasse, what if the parties can’t agree, how do you- what are the skills you can apply, and those are really important,” Lay said, “but [Fox] takes a different approach. What’s behind the skills? There’s more to solving a problem than just applying the skills.”

Graduate student and financial analyst Anna King attended the in person event, and took a class last semester where Fox used a pre-release version of “Perspectives on Conflict.” Fox used King’s class as well as others to test drafts of the book to make sure it was accessible for students as well as professionals.

“This book really changed how I think about and deal with conflict in life,” King said. “It’s not about winning or losing a conflict. It’s about going through the process and getting through to the other side with the best possible outcome in mind.”

“Perspectives on Conflict” is now available online and will be used in Fox’s future conflict studies classes.