EU COST Action IS1107 - European Network for Conflict Research (ENCoRe)

• Manager: Dr Joanna Dobrowolska – as Polish team member
• Financing institution: European Commission and ESF
• Implementation period: 2011-2016

Institution conducting the project: ETH Zurich 

Project description:

The upheavals which have rocked North Africa and the Middle East since the early 2011 caught many analysts and decision-makers by surprise. Although many of the institutions involved in peace and armed conflict research (including PRIO, SIPRI, the University of Uppsala and the University of Heidelberg) kept close tabs on conflict-prone areas, they were far from foreseeing such an eruption of discontent in the Arab world. As a consequence, leading European peace and conflict research institutions have sought to improve the way they monitored crisis hotspots and hotbeds of conflict. By joining forces under the COST Action framework named “European Network of Conflict Research” (ENCoRe), they have been seeking to develop innovative data integration and analysis tools. The aim of ENCoRe’s Action is to coordinate and accelerate the construction and maintenance of conflict datasets with the help of an integrated online portal that will allow researchers and decision-makers to analyze and predict the way conflicts around the world break out and develop.

Expected outcomes:

1. To develop a uniform armed conflict research methodology.

2. To create an integrated conflict database.