Join the Minerva Global Security Programme for the official launch of the special issue on "Change in Armed Conflict," as featured in the International Political Science Review.
Across the world, armed conflicts cause catastrophic human suffering. From Gaza, Darfur, and Ukraine, to Afghanistan, Syria, and Myanmar, we witness situations of evolving violence in which both state and non-state actors wreak havoc on societies, including across borders.
In this panel discussion, we celebrate the launch of the International Political Science Review Special Issue on “Change in Armed Conflict”. Better understanding changes in armed conflicts as the ones the world faces today is key to effective interventions to stop them. Embracing interdisciplinarity and methodological pluralism, the Special Issue thus sets a new agenda for studying change in armed conflict. It introduces a shared conceptual framework on five dimensions of change as a ‘lingua franca’ across diverse approaches and perspectives.
The panel will introduce the Special Issue articles highlighting diverse disciplinary angles including psychology, economy, visual arts, and international relations and covering case studies ranging from the Middle East over West Africa to South America. We will reflect on how the methodological tools and concepts introduced in the Special Issue help us understand and solve the pressing security issues the world faces today.
Panelists
Annette Idler (Special Issue editor)
Annette Idler is Associate Professor in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and Director of the Global Security Programme at Oxford’s Pembroke College. She studies global security in the context of armed conflict and the illicit economy, transitions from war to peace, and state responses to insecurity. Her books include Borderland Battles (OUP, 2019), Fronteras Rojas (Penguin Random House, 2021), and Transforming the War on Drugs (OUP/Hurst, 2021).
Daniele Rugo (Special Issue contributor)
Daniele Rugo is an award-winning filmmaker and Professor of Film at Brunel University London. His latest film 'The Soil and The Sea' (2023), explores the link between Lebanon’s missing people and the 100 mass graves scattered around the country since the civil war. He has published on conflict and the arts and his work has been funded by AHRC, ESRC and the British Academy. He was a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics from 2020 to 2023.
Katerina Tkacova (Special Issue contributor)
Katerina Tkacova is a research fellow in the Global Security Program: Contested Cross-border Spaces, Illicit Flows, and Order in the Contemporary World at the Blavatnik School of Government and a researcher at CONPEACE (From Conflict Actors to Architects of Peace) at the Pembroke College. Katerina's research focuses on the dynamics of contemporary and historical armed conflicts. Her work combines visualisation techniques with GIS and other quantitative data analysis.
Richard Caplan (discussant)
Richard Caplan is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations and a Fellow of Linacre College at the University of Oxford. Professor Caplan has written extensively on UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding, including one of the few studies of UN mission closure, and has directed several major research projects. His recent publications include Exit Strategies and State Building (OUP, 2012) and Measuring Peace (OUP, 2019).
