Luis Alberto Padilla Menendez is an scholar from Guatemala, with a University degree in  law and social sciences from the  State University of San Carlos and a Social Sciences doctorate from the University of Paris, (Pantheon Sorbonne) and a diploma on Conflict Resolution from  Uppsala University (Sweden). Currently he is president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations  & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ),  member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) and former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP).   He has a diplomatic career at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Guatemala,  where he is currently the Director of the Diplomatic Academy and has been vice Minister in the past as well as ambassador in Chile,  former permanent representative to the United  Nations  at  the Vienna International Centre and ambassador to Austria; ambassador  tothe Russian Federation; to the Netherlands and  permanent representative to the UN in Geneva. Dr. Padilla has also an academic career and currently he is  professor of the Seminar of  World Geopolitics  at the  Faculty of Political Sciences of the  Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala and director of a research seminar  on sustainable development at postgraduate level in same University. He is also a former professor of theory and history of international relations in both the Catholic and the State University of San Carlos (Guatemala)and a former director of IRIPAZ’s  revue Estudios Internacionale. Actually   he is the director of “Politica Internacional” (revue of the Diplomatic Academy ) and has several articles published in both revues as well as in other Latin American academic revues and books. Dr. Padilla is author of the university text book “Paz y Conflicto en el Siglo XXI. Teoría de las Relaciones Internacionales” (Guatemala, IRIPAZ, 2009) and he has also  published some articles in English,  among them “Peace Making and Conflict Transformation in Guatemala” (in the book of Hayward Alker, Ted Robert Gurr & Kumar Rupesinghe: Journeys through conflict: narratives and lessons,  Rowman & Littlefield publishers inc., New York & Oxford, 2001) and an article (Human Rights and Radical Democracy) that will be published soon in a book by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Springer.