The Conflict Research Programme
The Conflict Research Programme (CRP) was a four year research programme hosted by ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ IDEAS and formerly hosted by the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ International Development Department. The goal of the CRP was to understand and analyse the nature of contemporary conflict and to identify international interventions that ‘work’ in the sense of reducing violence, or contributing more broadly to the security of individuals and communities who experience conflict.
It is often assumed that contemporary conflicts are the consequence of ‘fragile’, ‘failed’ or ‘collapsed’ states. The CRP used the concept of public authority, which could refer to a state, a municipality, a chiefdom or an international organisation—or any emergent form of socio-political institution. The programme investigated how different forms of public authority actually function; and argued that levels of violence and insecurity tend to depend on the nature of the different logics.
Read our Research Framework for more information.
Our five research sites:
As well as our five sites, we also conducted research in the wider Horn of Africa/Red Sea and Arabian Gulf/Middle East regions.
We took a comparative politics approach to analysing the specifics of these locations, whilst also elaborating on local political idioms to better understand the complex economic and social underpinnings of politics and conflict that help explain the frustrations of state-building.
The CRP was an international research consortium led by the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ that received a £6.68m grant from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (formerly DFID). Following the successful completion of an inception phase, the programme was funded from October 2017 to March 2021.
Find out more on Our Funder page.
Lead partners in the programme were:
- Conflict Research Group at Ghent University.
- World Peace Foundation (WPF) and Feinstein International Center (FIC) at Tufts University.
- The Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS) at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani.
- Al Bayan Center for Planning and Studies
Find our more on Our Partners page. The consortium also worked closely with locally based research networks in each of the sites being studied.
The CRP officially ended on 31 March 2021.
To find out more, please email: intdev.crp@lse.ac.uk or contact the team at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ IDEAS.
We are located in ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ IDEAS, Connaught House, Fifth Floor, 265 Strand, Holborn, London WC2R 1DH.