Julie Lunde Lillesæter/PRIO
Julie Lunde Lillesæter/PRIO

Professor Kristian S. Gleditsch receives Anneliese Maier Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation as visiting scholar of the University of Konstanz.

One of the internationally leading social scientists in the field of conflict and democratisation research will work on joint projects with researchers from Konstanz in the next five years. Professor Kristian S. Gleditsch of the University of Essex, Great Britain, also an associate researcher at PRIO, is granted the Anneliese Maier Research Award, including prize money of 250,000 euros. During several stays at the University of Konstanz, the focus will be on reasons for violent conflicts and how to predict them. Additionally, Gleditsch will actively contribute to the promotion of young researchers at the University of Konstanz. He was nominated by Professor Gerald Schneider, political scientist from Konstanz.

Focus on Trouble Spots

Press Release from the University of Konstanz

Professor Kristian S. Gleditsch receives Anneliese Maier Research Award as visiting scholar of the University of Konstanz.

One of the internationally leading social scientists in the field of conflict and democratisation research will work on joint projects with researchers from Konstanz in the next five years. To do so, Professor Kristian S. Gleditsch of the University of Essex, Great Britain, is granted the Anneliese Maier Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, including prize money of 250,000 euros. During several stays at the University of Konstanz, the focus will be on reasons for violent conflicts and how to predict them. Additionally, Gleditsch will actively contribute to the promotion of young researchers at the University of Konstanz. He was nominated by Professor Gerald Schneider, political scientist from Konstanz. The aim of the award is to promote the internationalisation of the humanities and social sciences in Germany.

Prof. Gleditsch is the first political scientist receiving the Anneliese Maier Research Award, a prize which has never been given to Konstanz before. Gleditsch will strengthen social-scientific conflict research at the University of Konstanz and will especially collaborate with the working groups of Gerald Schneider and Nils Weidmann.

Determining the risk of political violence is one of the major global problems and therefore also presents a constant challenge to conflict research. The main focus of the future guest researcher and member of the Peace Research Institute Oslo is on civil wars and the systematic analysis of democratisation processes. The researcher from Norway uses a multi-disciplinary approach: together with colleagues he has just recently investigated, with the aid of satellite data, how income inequalities influence the danger of political violence. By using such new data sources, Gleditsch contributed to the Micro-foundations of Conflict Theory. In this booming field of work, local and regional micro-data are used to investigate the courses of conflicts more precisely.

In Konstanz, Gleditsch will help to promote the prognosis of political violence and research on mobilisa-tion processes such as the Arab Spring. For that purpose he will supervise, together with his partners in Konstanz, doctoral students and post docs in the Graduate School of Decision Sciences (GSDS).

Kristian S. Gleditsch is professor at the University of Essex, Great Britain, and member of the Peace Re-search Institute Oslo (PRIO). After his undergraduate studies at the University of Oslo he transferred to the University of Colorado, USA, where he completed his PhD in 1999. After holding positions a the University of Glasgow, Scotland, Harvard University and the Universi-ty of California (San Diego), USA, he went to Great Britain in 2005. Gleditsch has already won several awards, among others the European Research Council Starting Grant.