The Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Tomsk State Pedagogical University (TSPU) together with the UNITAR Hiroshima Office for Asia and the Pacific (HOAP) and the Institute for Peace Science of Hiroshima University (HU) organized the “Second International Conference on Peace Studies and Peace Discourse in Education” from 14 to 16 June, 2007 in Tomsk, Western Siberia, Russia. Conference participants were mainly university researchers and scientists from around 16 cities in Russia and abroad. Nassrine Azimi and Sergei Shaposhnikov of UNITAR HOAP, and Professors Masatsugu Matsuo and Masaharu Hoshi of Hiroshima University visited Tomsk to attend the conference and to identify and discuss areas for tripartite cooperation.  

The conference focused on the following themes:

• Science, Education and Society: issues relating to nuclear disarmament;

• The interdisciplinary character of peace studies (peace studies in philosophic and social-humanitarian discourse in the post-modern age);

• Problems of peace in a psychological context; experience of cross-ethnical relationships in time and space;

• Understanding of war and conflict experiences; forming conceptions of the value of peace in mass media;

• Exchange of experience in developing peace discourse in education between HU and TSPU; conceptual analysis of educational manuals and textbooks on peace studies.