Why should you study conflict, violence and peace at the University of Michigan?
With several institutions to choose from, that is a really good question.
Here are three reasons why you should choose Michigan.
1) The People
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Photographer: Hillary Nichols
With approximately 12-15 faculty specializing in political conflict, violence and peace, the University of Michigan (UM) has one of the largest constellations of conflict and peace scholars in the United States.
Why do you want a large number? Well, most political science departments only have a few individuals and this forces them to specialize on only one or a few topic areas. UofM does not have this problem. We are one of the largest and most diverse departments in the country, in terms of subjects covered and methodologies applied to examine them. We combine this broad scope with a commitment to high quality, sophisticated scholarship.
A balance of breadth and depth is important because of changes in the field and world around us. At a time when conflict research is expanding beyond the traditional core areas of interstate and civil war, and toward a more expansive set of theoretical and empirical problems -- like human rights violations/state repression, protests, protest policing, insurgency, counter-insurgency, prisoners of war, ethnic conflict, terrorism, sexual violence, and the complex connections between them -- the diversity at UofM is extremely important.
Michigan's depth includes scholars specializing in international relations at the macro-, cross-national level, as well as a new critical mass of scholars studying the micro-foundational dynamics of conflict at a highly disaggregated, subnational level. Our researchers are interested in factors that promote/hinder the onset, severity, duration and re-occurence of behavior at all levels of aggregation (e.g., a village, a city, region or a group within a nation by the year, month, week, day and occasionally hour).
Why do you want a large number? Well, most political science departments only have a few individuals and this forces them to specialize on only one or a few topic areas. UofM does not have this problem. We are one of the largest and most diverse departments in the country, in terms of subjects covered and methodologies applied to examine them. We combine this broad scope with a commitment to high quality, sophisticated scholarship.
A balance of breadth and depth is important because of changes in the field and world around us. At a time when conflict research is expanding beyond the traditional core areas of interstate and civil war, and toward a more expansive set of theoretical and empirical problems -- like human rights violations/state repression, protests, protest policing, insurgency, counter-insurgency, prisoners of war, ethnic conflict, terrorism, sexual violence, and the complex connections between them -- the diversity at UofM is extremely important.
Michigan's depth includes scholars specializing in international relations at the macro-, cross-national level, as well as a new critical mass of scholars studying the micro-foundational dynamics of conflict at a highly disaggregated, subnational level. Our researchers are interested in factors that promote/hinder the onset, severity, duration and re-occurence of behavior at all levels of aggregation (e.g., a village, a city, region or a group within a nation by the year, month, week, day and occasionally hour).
UM Michigan Conflict & Peace, Research & Development Topics of Study
Variable |
Robert Axelrod |
Christian Davenport |
Mark Dincecco |
Chris Fariss |
Justine Davis |
Barbara Koremenos |
Atrocities/Mass Killing/Genocide |
y |
y |
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Civil war |
y |
y |
||||
Counter-insurgency |
y |
|||||
Coups |
||||||
Cyber conflict |
y |
|||||
Electoral Violence |
y |
y |
||||
Ethno-religious conflict |
y |
y |
||||
Human rights violation/state repression |
y |
y |
y |
|||
Interstate war |
y |
|||||
International law/policy/organization |
y |
y |
y |
|||
Peace |
y |
y |
y |
y |
y |
y |
Prisoners of war |
||||||
Protest |
y |
y |
||||
Protest policing |
y |
|||||
Rebellion |
y |
y |
y |
|||
Sexual violence |
y |
|||||
Terrorism |
y |
|||||
Movement between inter & intra-state conflict |
y |
y |
Variable |
Brian Min |
James Morrow |
Ragnhild Nordaas |
Iain Osgood |
Megan Stewart |
Atrocities/Mass Killing/Genocide |
y |
||||
Civil war |
y |
y |
y |
y |
|
Counter-insurgency |
|||||
Coups |
|||||
Cyber conflict |
|||||
Electoral Violence |
|||||
Ethno-religious conflict |
y |
y |
y |
||
Human rights violation/state repression |
y |
||||
Interstate war |
y |
y |
y |
||
International law/policy/organization |
y |
y |
|||
Peace |
|||||
Prisoners of war |
y |
||||
Protest |
y |
||||
Protest policing |
|||||
Rebellion |
y |
y |
|||
Sexual violence |
y |
||||
Terrorism |
|||||
Movement between inter & intra-state conflict |
y |
While Michigan is diverse in interests and approaches, there are also several core areas of specialization. For example, a large number of faculty focus on topics of human rights violation/state repression, ethnic-religious and group conflict, protest and peace, as well as somewhat smaller concentrations in atrocities/genocide, civil war, coups, cyber conflict, electoral violence, interstate war, protest policing, rebellion, sexual violence, terrorism and movement between inter and intra-state conflict. This provides an incredibly rich environment with which to bounce ideas, collaborate, reflect and create. This also creates an incredibly stable environment because if one, two or a few faculty receive awards, go on leave or conduct field research, the larger program continues to thrive without losing momentum.
Not only are the substantive topics of interest varied among faculty at UM, but there is also great variation in methodological orientations found within the department. A large concentration of faculty employ cross-national and (more recently) subnational analyses, game theory, archival research and content analysis (human as well as automated/machine-assisted). There are also smaller clusters working with experiments, interviews/ethnography and satellite imagery. These combinations make for an amazing setting to share/create scholarship.
Ways of analyzing information/data |
Ways of collecting information/data |
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Sub-national |
Cross-national |
Game theory |
Experiments |
Interviews/ ethnography |
Archival |
Satellites |
Content analysis |
|
Robert Axelrod |
y |
y |
y |
y |
||||
Christian Davenport |
y |
y |
y |
y |
||||
Mark Dincecco |
y |
y |
||||||
Christopher Fariss |
y |
y |
y |
y |
||||
Justine Davis |
y |
y |
y |
y. |
||||
Barbara Koremenos |
y |
y |
y |
|||||
Brian Min |
y |
y |
y |
|||||
James Morrow |
y |
y |
y |
|||||
Ragnhild Nordaas |
y |
y |
y |
|||||
Iain Osgood |
y |
y |
||||||
Megan Stewart |
y |
y |
y |
Among the more important strengths of the University of Michigan is the fact that it currently has one of the largest group of graduate students interested in conflict, violence and peace. Many of our graduate students have interests in human rights violation/repression and rebellion, while others study atrocities, civil war, counter-insurgency, peace, protest, protest policing and terrorism. Methodologically, a large concentration of graduate students is focused on subnational conflict analysis. Reasonable groupings also exist in cross-national conflict, experiments and ethnography. There are also smaller, but robust communities employing satellite imagery, game theory and content analysis.
2) The Program
The University of Michigan's political science department has a long tradition in the study of conflict, violence and peace. For example, in 1957
Our connections to the creation and development of modern political conflict/violence studies is significant:
The editorial work on the Journal created an interdisciplinary community of scholars at the University of Michigan interested in issues of war and peace—including, significantly, several specialists in international relations. This group became the nucleus of the Center for Research on Con ict Resolu- tion, which was established at the University of Michigan with the enthusiastic support of its Vice President for Academic Affairs, Roger Heyns—who also happened to be a social psychologist. On a personal note, I joined the Center in 1962, when I came to Michigan on a joint appointment between the Department of Psychology and the Cen- ter for Research on Con ict Resolution.
The Research Exchange, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Center for Research on Con ict Resolution that evolved from it were part of an emerging peace research movement in the United States, Europe, and Canada during the 1950s. In my analysis, a major impetus to the development of the movement in those years came from the convergence of two strands, loosely corresponding to two groups of scholars that recognized their interdependence: scholars from elds outside of international relations—such as economists, psychologists, anthropologists, as well as occasional physicists, biologists, or mathematicians—who were interested in applying the concepts and methods of their elds to the study of war and peace because of their strong commitment to peace (as well as, of course, the intellectual challenge of the enterprise); and scholars of interna- tional relations (many of whom, of course, also had strong commitments to peace), who felt the need to go beyond the traditional ap- proaches of international law, international organization, and diplomatic history, and develop a scienti c basis for the study of war and peace.
The two strands needed each other in order to ful ll their potential. The non-specialists needed the specialists in order to legitimize their forays into areas in which they had not been trained, to ll in the substantive knowledge they lacked, and to provide real- ity testing for their conceptual models. The IR specialists, in turn, needed their colleagues from other disciplines as sources of concepts and methods, as well as of the validation and encouragement that they did not always receive in those days from their more traditional colleagues. The two groups thus formed.
Six years later, in 1963, the Correlates of War (COW) project was started in the department. As indicated on the project's webpage:
This project subsequently led to the creation of about a dozen spin-off databases, dozens of graduate students and hundreds of articles. Indeed, the project placed the systematic study of conflict/violence into the mainstream of political science. This illustrious history of pioneering scholarship, education, creativity and mentorship has continued over the years up to the present day.
Today, the University of Michigan's conflict, violence and peace research community is one of the largest and most rigorous programs in the field. There are:
The current period in Michigan's history thus continues the long-standing tradition of generating high-quality scholarship on international conflict (i.e., interstate and civil war), and has extended this tradition to include a wider variety of topic areas (e.g., human rights violation/state repression, genocide, sexual violence, cyber conflict and protest/protest policing), as well as a newer focus on subnational conflict/violence (i.e., that which explores the variation of conflict/violence/peace spatially and temporally within nation-states) and peace (i.e., activities that not only end conflict/violence but attempt to produce a broadened/deepened sense of community between human collectivities).
- a key stepping stone in the development of peace research in the tradition of the forbears identified above took place... when a group of prominent scholars based in North America came together to form the nascent peace research community (including Karl Deutsch, Anatol Rapoport, Kenneth Boulding and Herb Kelman [many of whom were based at the University of Michigan]) and with it inaugurated the Journal of Conflict Resolution (JCR). In an editorial that ushered in this new journal and an era of peace (as well as conflict/violence) research, the editors articulated a vision where scholarship would contribute to the resolution of conflict. The argument was that (as a community of researchers) we had to apply systematic methods to our understanding of the conditions that generate peace and prevent violence, but, importantly and consistently with the earlier scholars, the community started by focusing on conflict and violence (Editors, JCR, 1957). Without an understanding of this behavior and its causes, it was reasoned, we could not fully understand peace. Despite the strong empirical focus, conceptual and theory development continued with this emphasis on conflict and violence (Davenport, Melander and Regan: The Peace Continuum, 2018)
Our connections to the creation and development of modern political conflict/violence studies is significant:
The editorial work on the Journal created an interdisciplinary community of scholars at the University of Michigan interested in issues of war and peace—including, significantly, several specialists in international relations. This group became the nucleus of the Center for Research on Con ict Resolu- tion, which was established at the University of Michigan with the enthusiastic support of its Vice President for Academic Affairs, Roger Heyns—who also happened to be a social psychologist. On a personal note, I joined the Center in 1962, when I came to Michigan on a joint appointment between the Department of Psychology and the Cen- ter for Research on Con ict Resolution.
The Research Exchange, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Center for Research on Con ict Resolution that evolved from it were part of an emerging peace research movement in the United States, Europe, and Canada during the 1950s. In my analysis, a major impetus to the development of the movement in those years came from the convergence of two strands, loosely corresponding to two groups of scholars that recognized their interdependence: scholars from elds outside of international relations—such as economists, psychologists, anthropologists, as well as occasional physicists, biologists, or mathematicians—who were interested in applying the concepts and methods of their elds to the study of war and peace because of their strong commitment to peace (as well as, of course, the intellectual challenge of the enterprise); and scholars of interna- tional relations (many of whom, of course, also had strong commitments to peace), who felt the need to go beyond the traditional ap- proaches of international law, international organization, and diplomatic history, and develop a scienti c basis for the study of war and peace.
The two strands needed each other in order to ful ll their potential. The non-specialists needed the specialists in order to legitimize their forays into areas in which they had not been trained, to ll in the substantive knowledge they lacked, and to provide real- ity testing for their conceptual models. The IR specialists, in turn, needed their colleagues from other disciplines as sources of concepts and methods, as well as of the validation and encouragement that they did not always receive in those days from their more traditional colleagues. The two groups thus formed.
Six years later, in 1963, the Correlates of War (COW) project was started in the department. As indicated on the project's webpage:
- The original and continuing goal of the project (started by J. David Singer) has been the systematic accumulation of scientific knowledge about war. Joined by historian Melvin Small, the project began its work by assembling a more accurate data set on the incidence and extent of inter-state and extra-systemic war in the post-Napoleonic period... Building upon the work of other pioneers such as Pitirim Sorokin, Lewis Frye Richardson, and Quincy Wright, Singer and Small published The Wages of War in 1972, a work that established a standard definition of war that has guided the research of hundreds of scholars since its publication...This publication was only the beginning of the project, for the fundamental goal of the project was not just to measure the temporal and spatial variation in war but rather to identify factors that would systematically explain this variation.
This project subsequently led to the creation of about a dozen spin-off databases, dozens of graduate students and hundreds of articles. Indeed, the project placed the systematic study of conflict/violence into the mainstream of political science. This illustrious history of pioneering scholarship, education, creativity and mentorship has continued over the years up to the present day.
Today, the University of Michigan's conflict, violence and peace research community is one of the largest and most rigorous programs in the field. There are:
- a large number of courses on the topic being taught - click course to see sample syllabi:
- Advanced Studies in State Repression
- An Organizational Approach to Conflict & Violence
- Causes and Consequences of War
- Civil Conflict
- Coercion in Autocracies
- Cyber Conflict
- Empirical Models of Conflict
- Human Rights
- Security Studies
- Subnational/Micro-Foundational Conflict Analysis
- a vibrant/engaging weekly research workshop
- students, faculty, guest speakers get feedback on work in progress
- practice talks by graduate students on job market
- numerous databases being collected
- All Land Conflicts in Europe (800-1799)
- Conventional Battles of Interstate War (1939-2011)
- Cyber Attacks (2011-Present)
- DyoRep: Dyadic Data on Repressive Action (1976-2007)
- GenoDynamics: Rwandan Political Violence, 1994
- Internal and external conflicts for 11 nations in Europe (1650-1913)
- The Kenyan Security Apparatus (1963-2012)
- Labor union, NGO, and Progressive Opposition to US Trade Agreements (NAFTA-present)
- The Northern Ireland Research Initiative (NIRI): 1968-1998
- Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (1989-2009)
- Sexual Violence in the U.S. (2000-2013)
- Stalin's Terror (1928-1953)
- Subnational Analysis of Repression Project (SNARP)
- Syria (2011-Present)
- Ukraine (2014-Present)
- X-Sub: Cross-National Data on Sub-National Violence
- diverse articles and books that are underway (for recent listing see Productivity below)
The current period in Michigan's history thus continues the long-standing tradition of generating high-quality scholarship on international conflict (i.e., interstate and civil war), and has extended this tradition to include a wider variety of topic areas (e.g., human rights violation/state repression, genocide, sexual violence, cyber conflict and protest/protest policing), as well as a newer focus on subnational conflict/violence (i.e., that which explores the variation of conflict/violence/peace spatially and temporally within nation-states) and peace (i.e., activities that not only end conflict/violence but attempt to produce a broadened/deepened sense of community between human collectivities).
3) The Productivity (Sample)
The faculty and graduate students at UofM are engaged in a wide variety of projects which involve writing books, articles and conducting/creating/analyzing databases, interviews, archival material and/or theoretical models. These produce new knowledge but also facilitate opportunities for mentoring, co-authoring, instruction and community-building. We provide some examples below.
Christian Davenport
Books underway
Books underway
- Relative Contention and the Unification of Political Conflict and Violence (with Havard Nygard, David Armstrong and Hanne Fjelde) – Underway
- The Consequences of Contention: The Impact of Political Conflict and Violence on Politics and Economics (with Havard Nygard, David Armstrong and Hanne Fjelde) – Underway
- Forced Together: How Police Violence Unifies Americans and Forges a Way Forward (with David Armstrong) – Underway
- Ending Police Violence: A Global Analysis (with Meg Burt) – Underway
- Democracy, Threats and Non-Linear Influences on Repression (with Yuequan Guo and Meg Ryan)
- Global
- "DyoRep: Dyadic Data on Repressive Action"
- "Repression Spells" with Benjamin Appel
- Subnational
- GenoDynamics: Data on Rwandan Political Violence, 1994
- The Northern Ireland Research Initiative: 1968-1998
- The US Government vs. the Black Panther Party, 1967-1973
- The U.S. Government vs. the Republic of New Afrika, 1968-1973
- Untouchability in Gujarat, 2005-2008 (with Martin Macwan, Allan Stam, Manjula Pradeep and Navsarjan Trust)
- Disaggregating Anti-Patriot Act Resolutions
- Rashomon Goes to the Anti-Nato/G8
- Dyo-Rep: Perpetrator-Victim Dyads
- The Radical Information Project
Note: The figure represents the results of a Shaped Constrained Additive Model or SCAM capturing the impact of government (gov) and challenger (challenge) behavior on economic development.
Chris Fariss
Books underway
- "The Search for Rights"
- "Sub-national Analysis of Repression Project."
- "Global Surveillance dataset."
- Wealth, Weapons and War
- Human Rights Scores
- Sub-National Analysis of Repression Project (SNARP)
Mark Dincecco
Books underway
Books underway
- The Security Dilemma and Paths to Modern Development (with Yuhua Wang)
- "The Columbian Exchange and Conflict in Asia" (with James Fenske and Anil Menon).
- "The Introduction of the Income Tax, Extractive Capacity, and Migration: Evidence from U.S. States" (with Traviss Cassidy and Ugo Troiano).
- "Window of Opportunity: War and the Roots of Representative Governance" (with Gary Cox and Massimiliano Onorato).
- Geocoded database of conflict locations for all land conflicts in Asia, 1000-1900
- Geocoded database of conflict locations for all land conflicts in Europe, 1000-1800
Justine Davis
Books underway
Books underway
- Uncivic Legacies: Civil Society & Democratization in Post-Conflict Africa
- "Parochial Altruism in Civil Society Leaders: Legacies of Contested Governance"
- "Fear Factor: Mitigating the Unintended Consequences of Civic Education in Violent Contexts"
- "Get Out the Vote with Violence: Online Mobilization in Violent Elections"
- "Election Violence and Political Participation in Nigeria"
- "Enumerator Experiences in Violent Research Environments"
- "Documenting Electoral Violence: Assessing Tradeoffs in Data Collection Methodologies"
Iain Osgood
Articles underway
Articles underway
- "Escape Through Exports? Women-Owned Enterprises, Domestic Discrimination, and Global Markets"
- "Industrial Fragmentation over Trade: The Role of Variation in Global Engagement"
- "The Multidimensional Design of International Institutions: A Conjoint Analysis of the Preferences of Firms"
- "Intellectual Property Provisions and Support for US Trade Agreements"
- "Jobs! Exports! Growth! Congressional Hearings on US Trade Agreements"
- "Globalizing the Supply Chain: Firm and Industrial Support for US Trade Agreements"
- "Firm and Industrial Support for the TPP: Expanding Trade or Corporate Rights?"
- "The Best Defense is Temporary Protection"
- "Determining Trade Policy with Divided Industries"
- Firm and association positions on US trade agreement, tradable goods, NAFTA-present (complete)
- Firm and association positions on US trade agreement, service industries, NAFTA-present (complete)
- Topic-coded congressional testimony on US trade agreements, post-NAFTA (complete)
- Topic-coded submissions on TPP (in progress)
- Firms and association opposition to trade sanctions (prospective)
- Labor union, NGO, and progressive opposition to US trade agreements, NAFTA-present (prospective)