Call for Papers: 15th Annual HiCN Workshop “New Methods in Empirical Conflict Research”

The call for papers is open for the 15th Annual HiCN Workshop “New Methods in Empirical Conflict Research” that will take place at the Paris School of Economics (PSE) on 17-18 October 2019. 

In the last 15 years, civil conflict has gradually become an important subject of study for empirical economists. As a result, conflict research has adopted many empirical methods from mainstream economics. Furthermore, there is now a broad consensus that violent political conflict and economic development are intertwined, and a fast-growing literature studies this relationship with micro-data. At the same time, applied research on conflict is increasingly embracing new empirical methods, such as RCTs, geospatial analysis using high-resolution satellite imagery, machine learning methods, big data applications, and the large-scale digitization of archival resources. Each of these research tools has strengths and limitations and is the subject of ongoing methodological debates.

The 15th annual Households in Conflict Network Workshop will focus on how these new methods can be used in applied research on civil conflict. As in previous editions, we welcome any empirical paper on the causes, forms and consequences of civil conflict or related forms of political violence. However, we encourage work on civil conflict that uses these new empirical methods in particular.

The workshop will have three distinguished key-note speakers: Solomon Hsiang, Jacob Shapiro, Ekaterina Zhuravskaya.

The workshop will take place at the Paris School of Economics (PSE), 48 Boulevard Jourdan, Paris. The workshop is funded by the Centre pour la Recherche Economique et ses Applications (CEPREMAP).

Please send your papers to the email address of the workshop: hicn2019@gmail.com no later than 1 May 2019. Selected authors will be informed by 15 May 2019. Participants are expected to cover their transport and accommodation. A small number of scholarships will be available for PhD students who do not have access to alternative sources of funding.

The workshop is co-organized by François Libois (INRA, PSE), Oliver Vanden Eynde (CNRS, PSE), as well as the HiCN co-directors Tilman Brück (ISDC, IGZ and LSE), Patricia Justino (IDS) and Philip Verwimp (ULB).

The Households in Conflict Network (HiCN) is a global research network connecting empirical researchers working across the social sciences. HiCN publishes a working paper series with academic research and conducts annual workshops as well as topical workshops. Membership of HiCN is open to all researchers committed to the research agenda of HiCN with at least one suitable working paper for publication. More information is available here.

The complete Call for Papers can be downloaded here.

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