Additional positions:
Desk Editor at Journal of Peace Research
Popular Article in Morgenbladet
Conflict Trends
Popular Article in Political Violence at a Glance
PRIO Policy Brief
PRIO Policy Brief
Conference Paper
PhD Thesis
Journal Article in Journal of Peace Research
Popular Article in Washington Post
Journal Article in Terrorism and Political Violence
Arendalsuka concluded on Friday and PRIO Director Henrik Urdal sums up PRIO's contributions.
PRIO participated at this year's Arendalsuka with three events, and with our researchers on several debate panels.
Today, 3 December 2021, Ida Rudolfsen has successfully defended her doctoral thesis at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University. Her thesis is titled Fighting For Food? Investigating Food Insecurity as a
Source of Urban Unrest.
Congratulations to Ida!
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Programme. PRIO Director Henrik Urdal says the prize is extremely welcome, "also speaking to one of the great challenges of our time: the increasing number of refugees worldwide."
We are proud to congratulate two young PRIO scholars, who are on top of the list for the Jacek Kugler Political Demography and Geography Student Paper Award, which is awarded at the ISA conference starting in Baltimore tomorrow.
The winner of this year's award is Ida Rudolfsen with her paper “Igniting the Fire? State Institutions, Food Price Shocks and Urban Unrest”, which was considered the best graduate student paper within the Political Demography and Geography Section presented at last year's ISA conference.
The runner-up is Jonas Nordkvelle with his paper “Randomized Rain Falls on Political Groups: Discovering an Average Causal Effect of Climate Variability on Armed Conflict Onsets”.
The project will focus on the causal connection between adverse environmental change and discrete social upheavals, with examples including the ongoing civil war in Syria and the early Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
Political violence correlates strongly with climate: Civil conflict risk is seven to ten times higher in dry and tropical climates than in continental climate zones. Yet, there is little evidence that climatic variability and change are important in understanding this pattern. The prospect of climate change causing forced migration and food and economic insecurity, meanwhile, raises new concerns about possible future conflict scenarios.
On 10 December Nobel’s Peace Prize 2014 is awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai. Critical voices have claimed that their work is more about rights activism than promoting peace and that there is no obvious association between education and peace. Research into the causes of war suggests, however, that the Nobel Committee was right on target.
In the article ‘How to stop the fighting, sometimes', the Economist presents a nuanced history of how civil wars are initiated, sustained and brought to an end.