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We are currently preparing the launch of our new website. Please come back in a few days to explore more of our work on conflict changes.

 

With an inter-disciplinary team of researchers and a novel approach, this project explores the changes in the character of conflict. The conflict platform pays particular attention to changes in five dimensions of change.

 

  • Actors involved in conflict;
  • impact of conflict on civilians;
  • environments in which conflict takes place;
  • methods used in conflict;
  • resources that drive conflict.
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One of the major objectives of the project is to create a knowledge-based platform for academics, practitioners, policy-makers and the wider public to understand the changing character of conflict. This project is particularly important in the light of the world’s constantly changing security landscape. 

The map below shows locations of our 10 focal cases. Please click on the markers to see how conflicts change in time and space. Disclaimer: The maps and visualisations are work in progress which means that they are being constantly updated. Currently, you can explore conflicts in Colombia, the Horn of Africa, FATA area and Islamist insurgency in Nigeria.

 

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In some cases, non-state actors proliferate due to the fragmentation of existing groups, while others manifest processes of homogenisation. Some long-running conflicts have remained relatively constant in how they have been fought, whereas others have developed rapidly by increasingly relying on new technologies. Some conflicts have pushed towards and across borders, some have become urbanised, while others have moved into the cyberspace. Change also varies across space: both across regions and across conflicts within the same country. Finally, change in conflict is shaped by local cultures, yet embedded in shifting geopolitics, characterised by great power politics and a reshuffling of the balance of power through the (re-)emergence of new players.

The conflict platform project provides a novel tool and visualisations to analyse these changes in a nuanced and forward-looking manner.