Conflict Studies Group
The Conflict Studies group focuses on the dynamics of contemporary violent conflicts and collective violence. It aims to unravel the complexity of the web of relations and alliances producing contemporary war and violence, and the ways clusters of conflict cross-infect and exacerbate each other.
We combine open source investigation with ethnographic fieldwork in areas ranging from Iraq, Syria, Colombia and El Salvador to the US, France and the Netherlands, drawing on a variety of academic disciplines such as anthropology, political sociology, international relations and critical political economy. We depart from an understanding of violent conflict and war not so much as an outcome with clear causes, but as social phenomena which are mutating and unstable.
Our researchers are involved in a range of projects on:
- Non-state armed actors: unraveling the governance and mobilization of gangs, militias, and paramilitaries.
- Remote Warfare and new technologies of violence: critically analysing the role of interventions by advanced (Western) militaries and the way these impact civilian harm and blowback.
- Urban violence and policing: studying the interplay between structural urban inequalities, police discrimination/brutality and civil unrest.
Our research is closely linked to the educational minor in Conflict Studies and Master's programme in Conflict Studies and Human Rights.
- Cyber conflict, Conflict Studies, Cyber Warfare, Cyber Security, Artificial Intelligence, Internet Governance, Internet and Media, Surveillance and Mobility, Middle East, Digital Culture
- Theories of Violence, Armed Conflict, Remote Warfare, Institutions in Times of Large-Scale Violence, Conflict Studies, War Studies, Conflict Solution
- Insurgency, Militias, Research Methods
- Conflict Studies, Remote Warfare, Hybrid Warfare, Civilian-Military Relations, Autonomous Weapon Systems, Civilian Harm, Framing Violence
- Civilian-Military Relations, Conflict Studies, Military History, Transitional Justice, Identity, Ethics, Political Ecology, War Studies
- Conflict Studies, Urban Violence, Riots, Police Work, Ethnographic Fieldwork, Violence
- Conflict Studies, Hybrid Warfare, Remote Warfare
