Frans B.M. de Waal is C.H. Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory University and Director of the Living Links Center, an integrated part of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, both in Atlanta, Georgia. Trained as a zoologist and ethologist in the European tradition at three Dutch universities (Nijmegen, Groningen, Utrecht), he earned a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Utrecht in 1977. His dissertation research concerned aggressive behaviour and alliance formation in macaques. In 1975, a six-year project was initiated on the world's largest captive colony of chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo. Apart from a large number of scientific papers, this work found its way to the general public with Chimpanzee Politics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).

In 1981, de Waal accepted a research position at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. There he began both observational and experimental studies of reconciliation behaviour in monkeys. He received the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Peacemaking among Primates (Harvard University Press, 1989) a popularized account of fifteen years of research on conflict resolution in nonhuman primates. Since the mid-1980s, de Waal also studied chimpanzees at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and their close relatives, bonobos, at the San Diego Zoo.

In 1991, de Waal accepted a joint position in the Psychology Department of Emory University and at the Yerkes Primate Center. His current interests include food-sharing, social reciprocity, and conflict-resolution in primates as well as the origins of morality and justice in human society. His most recent books discuss the evolutionary origin of human morality, and the implications of that we know about bonobos and chimps for models of human social evolution. They include Good Natured (Harvard University Press, 1996), Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (University of California Press, 1997), The Ape and the Sushi Master (Basic Books, 2001) and Our Inner Ape (Granta, 2005).

The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Mental Health, the National Institutes of Health, and private foundations fund Prof. de Waal’s research.

As well as editing and contributing to the three volumes of the project’s work, John is the author of ‘A Global Survey of Explosive Remnants of War’, which was published by Landmine Action UK, and fed into negotiations in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons on a protocol on explosive remnants of war in June 2003.  He is also author or co-author of many articles and papers published on disarmament and humanitarian action related topics.

Prior to joining UNIDIR, John worked with the Mines-Arms Unit of the International Committee of the Red Cross and was Deputy Head of Mission for Disarmament in Geneva with the New Zealand Government between 1999 and 2002.

David Atwood is Director of the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva.  He also manages QUNO’s Disarmament and Peace Programme, which has given major attention to the small arms and light weapons issue area in recent years.  He is a co-founder of the Geneva Forum and of the International Action Network on Small Arms.

David has spent most of his working life in peace and social change work.  Prior to coming to QUNO in 1995, he served as the General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.  He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill).