After spending many years undertaking conflict-resolution work while based overseas, New Zealand-born Prof Clements became director of the newly-established National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, at the University of Otago, in January last year.
The centre focuses on the nature of conflict, its resolution, and creating peaceful environments.
Prof Clements has been kept busy, not only in teaching and undertaking research through the centre, but also promoting peace in person in some troubled parts of the globe.
Late last month, Prof Clements presented a paper as a New Zealand representative at a Council for Security Co-operation in the Asia Pacific working group meeting in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
The meeting involved the "responsibility to protect" people from human rights abuses.
Earlier last month, he also took part in a "Conflict Resolution Across Cultures" meeting in another troubled nation, Nepal.
This gathering brought together emerging leaders from the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation to discuss national and regional conflicts in the subcontinent.
Conflict areas included India and Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.
Prof Clements does not underestimate the big challenges to peace, and reflects that two hotels where he stayed in recent years were later hit by bombs, in Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2008, and in Jakarta, last year.
"It goes with the territory. Sometimes there are risks."
He tries to minimise risks to his safety, partly by taking advice from locals, when visiting conflict zones.
However, he emphasises that people of goodwill must keep going there, taking some risks to promote peace.
"It's very important that we're turning up as an act of solidarity with people who are in difficult circumstances."
Such people appreciated those who were prepared "to cross those rather uncomfortable divides to work with them".
Since the university centre was established last year, its home city Dunedin is also becoming part of the world conflict resolution map.
Prof Clements works closely with a network of overseas-based colleagues and organisations, and a steady stream of international figures involved with conflict resolution are visiting the centre, and the city.
Despite the difficult challenges to peacemaking, he remains optimistic and can point to statistics to support his standpoint.
From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, there were about 108 violent conflicts in various parts of the world.
More recently, the equivalent figure had dropped to 34 - with the latest conflicts involving civil wars, rather than clashes between countries.
Before taking up his Otago post, Prof Clements spent 17 years working overseas, most recently as director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland.
