(online and in person)
Civil War Paths: Understanding Civil War from Pre- to Post-War Stages
About this event
The dominant form of contemporary armed conflict, civil wars kill, displace, and force millions of people into poverty, leaving long-lasting effects at the individual, local, national, and international levels. In 2019 alone, which saw a record high in the number of state-based conflicts since 1946, nearly 80,000 people were killed directly from violence and many more from destruction and poverty. Civil wars have also lasting effects on political identities, as well as attitudes toward peace and civil war recurrence. This paper charts an agenda for future research on civil war and introduces the Civil War Paths project, “Understanding Civil War from Pre- to Post-War Stages: A Comparative Approach.” This project makes three departures from the existing literature. First, it views civil war as a complex process that connects the pre-war, wartime, and postwar stages of conflict through evolving interactions between states, non-state armed groups, local populations, and external actors. Second, it seeks to understand the dynamics that link the pre- to post-war stages of conflict to one another. Finally, it argues that civil wars follow different paths based on how they emerge, unfold, and end or transform and identifies four typical paths for paired qualitative comparison.
Anastasia Shesterinina is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics and International Politics, Director of the Centre for the Comparative Study of Civil War and UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow leading the Civil War Paths project at the University of Sheffield. Her fieldwork-intensive research examines the internal dynamics of and international intervention in civil war, with a focus on violent mobilization, ex-combatant reintegration, and civilian protection in armed conflict. Her book Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia was published with Cornell University Press in 2021 and her work has appeared in American Political Science Review, Journal of Peace Research, and International Peacekeeping.
Please note that this is an in-person event broadcast live via Zoom as well.
Note: Co-organized with the Network on Civil Wars, uMontreal.