The Peace Continuum: What It Is and How to Study It (Studies in Strategic Peacebuilding)

The idea of studying peace - over studying war, genocide and political violence and then inferring about peace - has gained traction recently, but how should it be studied? The Peace Continuum reviews the literature and offers three alternative ways in which peace could be conceptualized and studied.

Christian Davenport is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, as well as Global Fellow and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. His primary research interests include political conflict (e.g., human rights violations, genocide/politicide, torture, political surveillance, civil war and social movements), measurement, racism and popular culture. He is the author of seven books and numerous articles appearing in the American Political Science Review, the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, and the Monthly Review (among others). Davenport is also engaged in various data collection efforts, developing crowd-sourcing data collection programs and co-organizing workshops/conferences/webportals facilitating the development of conflict/peace studies.

Erik Melander is a Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden. His research interests concern gender, masculinities, armed conflict, and peace. His articles have been published in journals such as European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict resolution, Journal of Gender Studies, and Journal of Peace Research. He has experience from field-work in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Russia, South Africa, Thailand and the Yugoslav Federation.

Patrick M. Regan is a professor of political science and peace studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He researches the impact of climate change and social adaptation on armed conflict. His most recent book, The Politics of Global Climate Change (Paradigm, 2015), articulates a multi-level political process for influencing climate change legislation, beginning with local politics.