CSCW Cross-cutting Activities (2003-2012)

Cross-cutting Activities encourage a conscious focus on a variety of disciplines and methods. This includes application of state-of-the-art statistical methods from economics and political science to conflict as well as to other social phenomena. It includes linking important theoretical developments outside conflict research per se - for example, in IR, gender studies, psychology and religion or international law and ethics - to the study of civil war. It also includes linking related policy areas (sanctions, health policy, migration/refugees) to study of peacemaking and peacebuilding.

Data management is another major cross-cutting issue. CSCW is a significant user of data on conflict and explanatory variables. We will also collect our own data, contributing to the creation of better and more nuanced conflict data on the basis of definitional critiques and innovation. Casualty figures and spacial relationships are among the early areas for work; another is studies of social polarization as undertaken in a new EU-funded network coordinated in Barcelona are much more uncertain and ambiguous. The complex interaction between aid and peace policy will be explored, for example, through close collaboration on the new Human Security Report, a project undertaken at the Liu Center for the Study of Global Issues, UBC.

Centre associates are grouped here for reasons of the themes of inquiry mentioned above, or because they benefit all Centre WGs by virtue of their disciplinary and methodological pluralism.