Methodological Advances in the Study of Civil War and Political Violence

The study of civil war, conflict, rebellion, insurgency and other forms of organized political violence has made many significant methodological advances over the past two or so decades with innovations in quantitative methods and experimental designs, the influx of more systematic case-comparisons, the strive for identifying causal mechanisms, deep ethnographic research, all combined with the demands for more rigour and transparency in research designs. The field hence has clearly become methodologically diversified offering a home to many different approaches and techniques from various backgrounds. Our aim is to further methodologically rigorous and cutting-edge research on civil war and political violence across different epistemological communities to advance the field as a whole. Our section aims to serve as a forum for scholars from different methodological backgrounds to engage with each other and each other’s work, to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to the study of particular forms of civil war and political violence. The Section will present theoretically grounded and empirically informed papers that reflect carefully on the methodological aspects of their research design and data analysis, with innovative work drawing on a variety of methodological approaches, including among others, interpretative and ethnographic methods, single case studies and small-n comparisons, quantitative and experimental techniques, and multimethod designs. Methodologically focused papers will be presented with relevance to the study of political violence, from both senior and junior international scholars that showcase cutting-edge methodological innovations in the field. Upon completion of the conference, authors of selected Papers from the Panels will be considered to contribute to a special issue of a relevant journal, and to develop a platform for future collaboration.