Dr. Angela Lederach (Peace and Justice Studies) receiving the award for co-recipient of the 2025 International Science Prize for Peace and Ecology in the Anthropocene Book award. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Lederach).

Peace, like grass, grows slowly and demands patience, care, and community. This vision, captured in Dr. Angela Lederach’s (Peace and Justice Studies) book Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace (Stanford University Press), is now being recognized globally.

Dr. Lederach was recently the co-recipient of the 2025 International Science Prize for Peace and Ecology in the Anthropocene Book award. The award recognizes scholars whose books reflect innovative and empirically based studies that deepen understanding of the relationship between peace and ecology, and is sponsored by the Hans Günter Brauch Foundation, which aims to promote science and research, education, international peace, and environmental protection in the Anthropocene.

Her book was published after a decade of experience conducting participatory and ethnographic research with social movements dedicated to peace in Montes de María, Colombia. It traces multigenerational struggles for peace and explains how attention to social and environmental relations requires a much deeper timeframe for thinking about peace and social change.

“I feel deeply honored to receive the award,” Dr. Lederach said. “It was inspiring to share with other scholars in Mosbach, Germany, during the award ceremony, which also included awards for high school students, PhD students, and a lifetime achievement award for a distinguished, senior scholar.”

She has already received several honors for this book: in 2024, she received an award from the American Library Association for the best academic title, and in 2025, she received an award from the Peace Section of the International Studies Association (ISA).

During the award ceremony week, Dr. Lederach and her co-recipient, Dr. Matthew G. Gillett from the University of Essex, talked to high schools in Mosbach, Germany, about their research.

“I think this is one of the more powerful contributions of the foundation, which aims to connect international research to local action,” she said.

Dr. Lederach hopes the book will show students that even in the midst of violence and inequality, it is still possible to take concrete actions towards peace.

“I also hope students might gain insight into the longer-term commitment and patient work of peace that actually holds the seeds for transformative change – the challenge, of course, is that this work is rarely the most visible, particularly in an attention economy that is increasingly constrained by the rapid, fleeting, and algorithmically-generated content of rage and fear,” she said.

Congratulations, Dr. Lederach!

(Pictured in header: Dr. Angela Lederach’s (Peace and Justice Studies) (three from left) posing with her colleagues, holding her book Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace). Photo courtesy of Dr. Lederach).