London, Oct 05: Mary King, professor of peace and conflict studies at the UN-affiliated University for Peace, a Costa Rica-based global institution, has won this year's Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation International Award for promoting Gandhian values outside India. The award will be presented at a special function in Mumbai on November 4 this year. Previous winners of the award included Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Prof Sir Joseph Rotblat of the United Kingdom and Professor Johan Galtung of Norway.

In January 2004, king will also become visiting research fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. "I am delighted that Mary has won this important award," Martin Lees, the rector of peace said. "She has made an enormous contribution to education for peace programmes in many parts of the world, particularly Africa," Lees said, according to a release by the University of Peace

Mary King is a prize-winning author, political scientist, and a well-known civil rights leader in the USA. As a student, she was one of the few white staff who worked alongside the reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. in the crusade for racial justice. She won a 1988 Robert F Kennedy Memorial Book Award for her book "freedom song: a personal story of the 1960s civil rights movement", an account of her four years working in the US civil rights movement.

Bureau Report