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Great panel at ISA on "Diplomatic Interventions and Challenges in Global Peacebuilding." Thanks to Jeffrey Helsing for great feedback. I presented my research on how extending or withdrawing military support in mediation processes undermines the prospects for durable peace. I have been working on this for four years now, but could add a slide just the day before...

A big thanks to the excellent panelist and audience of the roundtable organized by International Peacekeeping Journal ‘Crisis or opportunity? The future of peace missions in an evolving world order’ Mateja Peter Jenna Russo Corinne Bara Tom Buitelaar Chiara Ruffa. So many interesting questions were raised regarding the effectiveness, adaptability, and political dynamics of peacekeeping. Looking forward to continued discussions! Consider submitting your work to International Peacekeeping Journal and follow us for updates!

Excited to share our latest article in Journal of Conflict Resolution: “Crises and Negotiations in Mutual Interventions.” Henning Tamm and I explore why rival states, supporting rebels in each other’s conflicts, decide to negotiate. Spoiler: international crises play a key role. Check out the article here: https://lnkd.in/d4fMyFN3. Mutual interventions often go under the radar but are widespread and make associated civil wars far more deadly. It is therefore important to understand what drives negotiations that have the potential to lead to the settlement of mutual interventions. Using new monthly data on mutual interventions in Africa (1960–2010), we find crises significantly increase the likelihood of negotiations. Why? Costs rise, and mediators intensify pressure. Our findings show that crises increase urgency, making states more open to negotiation. One important contribution of our article is that unlike many previous quantitative studies that look at material factors like battle-deaths to explain the occurrence of negotiations, we focus on how the leaders’ perceptions of crises drive decisions to negotiate. We hope our work sparks further research on mutual interventions. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/d4fMyFN3.

I believe that the lack of research on where peacekeepers patrol is one of the biggest gaps in the academic literature on peacekeeping.While the data comes with some challenges, Luke Abbs and I try to address this gap in research in this new Open Acces article in International Interactions. Check out: https://lnkd.in/dXfqnwQ4.

I will give my inaugural lecture "Pathways to Peace: Conflict Resolution in Turbulent Times" today at 17.15 Zurich time: https://lnkd.in/ddyF2wrq. You can watch it live here: https://lnkd.in/d-_Gsjfj.

As the chair of the CRS Book Prize Committee, it is really a pleasure to announce that the Conflict Research Society congratulates Peer Schouten on winning the 2024 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize for his book titled Roadblock Politics: the origins of violence in Central Africa: https://lnkd.in/gyYZ_--e. The prize committee received over 50 nominations from conflict/peace researchers, institutions, practitioners, and publishers from around the world. The committee chose the winning title out of four short-listed books based on criteria such as how well the book demonstrates a significant contribution to conflict/peace studies, impact factor, methodological rigour, robustness, and credibility of the findings, the extent to which it is interdisciplinary, quality of writing, and presentation. The jury was impressed with the way that Schouten unpacks the motif of the roadblock to explain much broader patterns of conflict and state building in Central Africa. According to one of the jury members: “Schouten takes a seemingly niche phenomenon and shows that it is absolutely not niche, but central in the production and renegotiation of power in countries where the administrative state is not strong.” The jury agreed that the fieldwork on which Schouten draws is outstanding, and illustrates his deep knowledge of the territories in which he works. He compellingly weaves in historical legacies with contemporary patterns of violence and competition for power, bridging conflict studies, development studies, and political economy. A well-written text, Shouten develops theories of power – based in roadblock politics – that travel well to other contexts and challenge conventional thinking about what we should focus our attention on in contexts of violence. Congratulations on an interesting book that shows us how something as simple as ’the roadblock’ has much broader implications for our understanding of violence, authority, and power, and how they manifest in unexpected ways. This winner was elected out of a total of three finalists in the shortlist. These were excellent contenders for the prize and the judges also praised the excellent quality of research in all of the shortlisted books. Our congratulations are extended to the following running up shortlisted titles (in no particular order): ·      Maria Sosnowski. Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria. Cambridge University Press. ·      Jason Stearns. The War that doesn't say its Name: The Unending Conflict in the Congo. Princeton University Press. Thank you also to the CRS Book Prize Judges – Julia Zulver, Isabel Phillips, Robert Nagel, Luke Abbs, Corinne Bara, and Allard Duursma (facilitator).