Polly O. Walker is a scholar, leader, and advocate for peace. She is Director of Juniata College’s Baker Institute, Director of IMPACT–Imagining Together: Platform for Arts, Culture, and Conflict Transformation, and Director of the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University.

Along with Cynthia E. Cohen and Roberto Gutiérrez Varea, she is the co-editor of Acting Together I: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence (New Village Press, 2011) and Acting Together II: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Building Just and Inclusive Communities (New Village Press, 2011). At Brandeis University and with Theater Without Borders, Walkers was involved in Acting Together on the World Stage and co-created the accompanying documentary and toolkit. 

Her work centers on the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of conflict transformation. She earned a PhD in Education from the University of New Hampshire, a Master’s in Urban Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BA in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. She lives in Massachusetts. 

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