John W. Burton

John Wear Burton "was born in Melbourne on 2 March 1915, the son of the Reverend Dr John Burton, who was President-General of the Methodist Church of Australasia in 1945-47.

"Burton was educated at Newington College, Sydney, and the University of Sydney. He joined the Commonwealth Public Service in 1937 and was later awarded a Commonwealth scholarship to study at the London School of Economics, where he gained a doctorate in 1941. He was transferred to the Department of External Affairs in 1941 and in the following year he became private secretary to the Minister, H.V. Evatt. In 1945 he was promoted to First Secretary of the Economic Relations Division. In February 1947 he was appointed Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, a position he held until June 1950. In January 1951 he was appointed High Commissioner in Ceylon, but resigned and returned to Australia in March to stand as an ALP candidate in the federal election. He was defeated for the seat of Lowe by William McMahon.

"Burton spent the next few years as a farmer near Canberra and wrote his first book on foreign policy, The Alternative (1954). In 1960 he was awarded a fellowship at the Australian National University and in 1962 received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study Asian and African policies of neutralism. In 1963 he became Reader in International Relations at University College, University of London, and in the next twenty years published extensively on the subject of diplomacy and conflict resolution. In the same year he established the Centre for the Analysis of Conflict, which he took to the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1979.

"In 1982 he was given an International Studies Association Fellowship at South Carolina. After this fellowship was completed he was invited to the University of Maryland, and then in 1985 he joined the George Mason University, Fairfax, where another Centre for the Analysis of Conflict was established.

"In the late 1980s Burton began to spend more time in Australia and resumed farming near Braidwood. He now lives in Canberra. "

"Burton and the original Centre for the Analysis of Conflict moved to the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1979 where he remained until 1981. He then moved to the University of South Carolina where he was awarded an International Studies Association Fellowship. After a brief but productive period at the University of Maryland, Burton was persuaded to join George Mason University to help in the development of a new Centre for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, now known as the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR)."


 * Dist. Fellow (88-9), USIP

Related Sourcewatch

 * Laura Nader, Some notes on John Burton's papers on 'resolution of conflict', International Studies Quarterly, n.d.:53-58
 * Hendrik van der Merwe
 * Edward Azar
 * James Laue