Conflict research: lancunas, mantras and pitfalls

The invitation to give a presentation at the Young Pugwash (ISYP) workshop on New Challenges to Human Security in Wageningen, the Netherlands and contribute this comment came at the right time. With the academic year drawing to a close, and the number of MA theses of a new generation of conflict researchers piling up on my desk, the ISYP request allowed me to pause for a moment and look critically at my field of study. ‘What are the lacunas in conflict research?’ the ISYP organisation wanted to know. ‘Where do our analyses or approaches fail? And: do we ask the right questions?’ The art of formulating questions lies at the heart of academic thinking and, interestingly, prompting and important questions such as these are often asked by people outside of ones own area of expertise. In this brief article I will focus on the first two questions and discuss a number of lacunas, mantras and pitfalls in the new field of study that Conflict Studies is by means of six brief statements and recommendations (see the headers of the following sections). Hopefully, this will inspire people to ‘ask the right questions’ when it comes to understanding how and why people resort to collective violence.