Charli and I, along with a few other colleagues here in the Five Colleges are hosting this year’s joint annual conference of the International Security Studies Section and International Security and Arms Control Section of ISA and APSA. The conference will be held Oct. 8 – 10 — fall break weekend and peak fall foliage in New England!

The conference theme is Global Trends in War and Political Violence. Over the past century, we have witnessed episodes of extreme interstate and intrastate violence as well as periods of relative stability and decline in war and armed conflict. We’re looking for proposals from diverse theoretical, methodological, epistemological, and geographical approaches to examine the broad trends in interstate war, intrastate war, and political violence over the past century, the current state of these issues, and what future trends might look like. In particular, we’d love to see proposals that address the following sets of questions: What are the long-term trends on war, conflict, and political violence? What explains these long-term trends and how are these patterns changing? How effective are the norms, institutions, and practices designed to control and mitigate war and political violence? What are the likely future trends, and in particular, how will violence manifest itself in an era that seems likely to be characterized by further globalization, urbanization, civil war, and the emergence of new and varied non-state actors? And, how are factors such as climate change, resource scarcity, demographic stress, ethnic and religious strife, social and economic inequality, and environmental degradation, affecting, and likely to affect, longer-term trends in war and political violence?

Of course, we’re also accepting proposals on a wider range of international security issues as well.

The submission deadline is July 1. All submissions should be made through the conference website portal.