Leah Wing, Ed.D.

Co-Director, National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution
Senior Lecturer, Legal Studies Program, Political Science Department, University of Massachusetts/Amherst (USA)

Leah serves on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst where her research and teaching apply critical theory to ODR, mediation, and reconciliation in colonized and postcolonial societies. She has also been a mediator and trainer for educational institutions, government agencies, and non-profits since 1985, has served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Conflict Resolution from 2002-6, and has been a member of the editorial board of Conflict Resolution Quarterly since 2002.  She is the founding director of the Social Justice Mediation Institute.

Leah is particularly interested in the role that technology and art play in conflict and its resolution and she directs the Center’s Art of Conflict Transformation program. Since 2007 she has managed an event series hosted online and at the University of Massachusetts exploring such topics as the role of murals during the war and transition to peace in the north of Ireland/Northern Ireland and the creation of political textiles as acts of resistance to state violence in Chile and Peru.  She is presently collaborating with partners from several nations on the development of online archives and exhibition space for conflict-related art as part of conflict transformation processes.    

Leah’s publications concentrate on the critical examination of conflict transformation theory and practices in both the online and offline worlds and her most recent publication is “Online Dispute Resolution and the Development of Theory” co-authored with Dan Rainey and forthcoming in M. Waahab, D. Rainey and E. Katsh, Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice (2011).

Leah has served on ODR research teams with colleagues from the UMASS Department of Computer Science and the National Mediation Board for a number of grants funded by the National Science Foundation, including:

• The Fourth Party: Improving Computer-Mediated Deliberation through Cognitive, Social and Emotional Support
• Process Families and their Application to Online Dispute Resolution
• Process Technology for Achieving Government Online Dispute Resolution

Leah has been the recipient of:

• Award for Distinguished Service to the Field of Conflict Resolution, Association for Conflict Resolution
• Kuumba Award in Appreciation of Support and Efforts in Promoting Opportunities in the Field of Alternative Dispute Resolution for Minority Professionals, Capital University Law School, Minority ADR Program, Columbus, Ohio
• Chancellor’s Award for Multiculturalism, University of Massachusetts/Amherst