Dr. Michelle LeBaron

Professor Michelle LeBaron is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar on conflict transformation, arts and resilience. Upon joining the Peter A. Allard School of Law, she directed the UBC Program on Dispute Resolution from 2003-2012. As an Associate Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and the Women's Studies program at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia from 1993-2003, Professor LeBaron did seminal work on intercultural conflict engagement. This work built on community-based research she conducted as director of the Multiculturalism and Dispute Resolution Project at the University of Victoria in the early 1990s. Professor LeBaron was called to the Bar of British Columbia in 1982 and practised for ten years as a family law, commercial and organizational mediator. She gives keynotes and consultations around the world on intercultural conflict resolution, the role of arts in fostering resilient leadership, and creative ways of engaging religious and political conflicts.

Professor LeBaron's research and writing explores the role of arts and aesthetic perspectives in transforming conflict. Her projects include Dancing at the Crossroads, a four-year investigation of kinaesthetic resources for mediators and conflict parties, CRANE (Conflict Resolution, Arts and iNtercultural Experience), a multi-modal, international research collaboration, and Enacting Resilience, a three year exploration of how arts engagement can play a role in countering violent extremism. Her books include The Choreography of Resolution: Conflict, Movement and Neuroscience, Conflict Across Cultures, and Bridging Cultural Conflict. In 2015, Professor LeBaron was awarded a three year Knut and Alice Wallenberg fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies in South Africa for her project Being Human Today: The Theory and Practice of Social Transformation through the Arts. She is also a 2016-17 fellow at the Trinity College Long Room Hub in Dublin, Ireland. Professor LeBaron is passionate about optimizing interdisciplinary collaboration, and serves on the International Academic Advisory Board of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC.