Dr. Robert Enright is the unquestioned pioneer in the scientific study of forgiveness. He has been called "the forgiveness trailblazer" by Time magazine and is often introduced as "the father of forgiveness research" because of his 25-year academic commitment to researching and implementing forgiveness programs.
Dr. Enright is the author or editor of seven books, and over 100 publications centered on social development and the psychology of forgiveness. He published the first social scientific journal article on person-to-person forgiveness and the first cross-cultural studies of interpersonal forgiveness. He also pioneered forgiveness therapy and developed an early intervention to promote forgiveness--the 20-step "Process Model of Forgiving." The Enright Forgiveness Inventory, now used by researchers around the world, is an objective measure of the degree to which one person forgives another who has hurt him or her deeply and unfairly.
A professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a position he has held since 1978, Dr. Enright previously taught at the University of Minnesota and the University of New Orleans. He is co-founder of the International Forgiveness Institute, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge about forgiveness and community renewal through forgiveness. He is also a licensed psychologist.
Dr. Enright has received funding from the John Templeton Foundation to conduct research into medical applications of forgiving. He also received funding from a variety of foundations, agencies and individuals for establishing and operating the International Forgiveness Institute. He currently has elementary and/or high school forgiveness education programs operating in Northern Ireland, Greece, Liberia, Singapore, Ghana, Lebanon, the Philippines, Slovakia, Italy, Colombia, Canada, and in Wisconsin as well as other states around the U.S.
For his work in the peace movement, Dr. Enright was named a 2006 Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary International. In 2007, he received UW-Madison's highest award--the Hilldale Award for "excellence in teaching, research, and service." He also received the 2008-2009 Dick Ringler Distinguished Peace Educator Award from the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.