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Category: Research

A grafitti of a group of protesters holding signs and flags.

Systems of Conflictivity

By Andréa Gill. In places where violence functions as the norm sustaining systemic inequalities – and, hence, not as a moment of exception or as the occasional breakdown of order – it becomes necessary to reconceive the peace and conflict archives in ways which take into account structural insecurity and socio-economic precarisation. From the perspective of postcolonies, we can perceive the multiple and imbricated ways in which conflict springs from the inequality embedded in relations of power. The concept of ‘systems of conflictivity’ enables us to grasp, then, the determinants of violence as a continuum in a manner which linear causality (of periodisation and events) fails to do so.

Old black and white photograph of a group of people sitting on a conference table under a sign saying "How noice it is to meet our brothers! Vive le cameroun unifié."

Colonialities of Power and Peace in Cameroon

By Nicanor Tatchim. This article makes the case that the militarised model of peace favoured in the discourse around Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis falls within a hegemonic, liberal/Western conception of peace shaped by the coloniality of power. This top-down perspective makes no space for a pluriversal dialogue, which is essential for resolving the crisis. Drawing on the concepts of decolonial peace and coloniality (of power), the article outlines several pathways for enshrining peace in Cameroon – and in Africa more broadly – within African peoples’ systems of values and knowledge. The core argument is that lasting peace in Cameroon and other conflicts on the continent requires a decolonial and Indigenous approach to peace.

A group of scholars in front of a brown building with a sign reading "Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre".

Disrupting the Knowledge Trap ‒ Early-Career Researchers and the Global South as Agents of Epistemic Change

By Natália Bueno, Roberta Holanda Maschietto, and Sarah Njeri. This entry questions the foundations of knowledge production in Peace and Conflict Studies by advocating an incremental movement that adopts a bottom-up and inside-out approach. Specifically, we argue that, with support, early-career researchers (ECRs) from the Global South can be pollinators, spreading new knowledge production methods across ECR groups globally and scaling up to engage mid- and senior-level researchers. This is essential for the progression of better, more inclusive knowledge production worldwide.

The skyline of Tunis in front of a cloudy sky.

Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies in a Postcolonial World

By Miriam Bartelmann, Viviana García Pinzón, and Fabricio Rodríguez. The conference Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies in a Postcolonial World took place in Tunis in October 2025, marking the culmination of four years of collaborative research, while opening a space for collective reflection on the network’s contributions to the field. The discussions addressed the deep relationship between knowledge production and global hierarchies, showing that rethinking peace and conflict studies necessarily entails confronting the field’s epistemic foundations while remaining attentive to geopolitical developments, uneven power relations and the political economies affecting it.

Rethinking East European Studies in Times of Upheaval: Some Reflections on Ukrainian Studies in Germany (and Not Only)

By Andrii Portnov. Ukrainian history and literature in the German higher education system are the disciplines whose institutional weakness is more than obvious. Ukraine itself, in the eyes of a large part of German (including academic) society, still does not have enough cultural and historical agency and remains ‘in the shadow of Russia’.

Racism in German Public Institutions – Interview with Matthias Middell

The Research Institute for Social Cohesion is investigating racism in German public institutions on behalf of the Federal Ministry of the Interior in a project titled “Rassismus als Gefährdung des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalts im Kontext ausgewählter gesellschaftlich-institutioneller Bereiche”. We discussed the goals of this research with Matthias Middell (University of Leipzig), spokesperson of the FGZ and co-principal investigator of this study.

Book Review: The Routledge Handbook of Transregional Studies

By Jeremy Adelman. A few years ago, I organized a symposium at Princeton University. The theme was: does globalization mean that the social sciences (broadly defined) need to rethink their intellectual foundations? In the end, we came to a draw. Some felt that old models and familiar framings worked fine. Others saw global integration as an intellectual shakeup of the bedrock of methodological nationalism.