This is Conflict Consortium’s second annual effort at providing students who want to pursue a PhD at a US department of political science university in the fields of political conflict/violence (e.g., genocide, civil war, human rights, atrocity, terrorism and revolution) and peace (e.g., negotiation, non-violent direct action, social movements and cooperation) with important information to help them evaluate graduate programs. The data at the core of this guide come from a large survey of scholars in research-oriented political science department that we conducted in late October 2017. We sent the survey to all 3,607 faculty members at the 120 institutions listed in the 2017 editions of US News World & Report's Best Political Science Programs ranking. During the eight days we collected data, 71 participants across 57 institutions participated in the survey (though not everyone completed it). Our hope is that more conflict/peace scholars will participate in future years.  

We report the lightly cleaned results of our survey here. When multiple people replied for a department, we aggregated their answers. The results here are also available in a raw text file and in wide- and long-form datasets. We think that prospective graduate students evaluating conflict/peace-programs would do well to review this data. Some faculty might find it of interest as well.

The Conflict Consortium 

The Consortium changed some things in order to better move forward.  One of these involved the development of a new logo (from Charles Crabtree).  In honor of our beloved co-founder who passed (Will Moore), we have one black one with white letters (for him) and ​one white one with black letters (for me).  

Consortium Out!

Series Intro
​
While the project mourns the loss of its Co-Founder, Co-Director, friend and colleague (Will H. Moore) as well as contemplates the way forward, we wish to revisit one of the things that Will did best and loved to do: interact with scholars about their work.  

Like with many things, it all started with a conversation about how we thought our existing way of "doing" political science was missing something.  We thought that conferences were kind of broken and, as a result, the opportunity when scholars were brought together was being lost: e.g., you never got enough time to present, you never got enough feedback, you often had strangers and people who knew nothing about your topic put on your panel so that the conference could sell as many memberships as possible and you were largely caught within the networks that your home institution put you into and in order to get out of this (as a junior person) you would kind of have to put yourself out there - vulnerable, exposed, subject to the vagaries of personality types that populate the profession (scary thought). Upon thinking about this, we were like: that sucks and it does not need to be that way.  In that spirit, we launched the Conflict Consortium which was kind of a shot across the bow, a wake-up call, a series of questions and a series of attempts to make things better.  Some things took off well.  Some did not.

The Virtual Workshop is something that we both thought did what it was supposed to do.  ​As we stated at the beginning:

• The Conflict Consortium (CC) Virtual Workshop (VW) is an opportunity for junior CC members (Assistant Professors & PhD students) to get feedback on their working paper.  It is a 90 minute session that runs in accord with Charles Tilly's Seminar Rules of Engagement [ungated PDF], which we summarize below, and will take place via Google Hangout (or a similar platform). The co-convenors, Christian Davenport and Will H. Moore recruit 3-5 additional scholars to participate and provide the feedback. 

Others seemed to share our opinion that we were on to something.  They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and we are very pleased that our CCVW has inspired others to create virtual workshops.  

Legislative Studies Virtual Workshop (LSVW)
Online Peace Science Colloquium (OPSC)
Virtual IPES
Virtual Workshop on Authoritarian Regimes (VWAR)

We hope you might consider creating one for your scholarly community.  Please steal our idea!

Once a week, we will post a new session.  There you can see, Will, myself and the participants bringing it (time after time) in the most caring, interactive and useful way imaginable. Indeed, it is very heartwarming to see the exchange - on many levels, as it shows political science as it could be, not frequently how it is. Now, unfortunately, we were not up and running with the recording initially and thus there are some sessions that were not videotaped.  While Will would normally apologize for this (on our behalf), I will do this for him.  It is kind of like starting Star Wars at Episode IV though.  We just kind of jump in and perhaps at some date we will find some way to take you back in time.  

For now: Enjoy The Conflict Consortium Virtual Workshop, Episode 9: 19 March Omar Garcia-Ponce (PhD Candidate, NYU): "How Political Violence Shapes Trust in the State: Evidence from Zimbabwe" (co-authored with Benjamin Pasquale);
            Discussants: David Backer, Hanna Birnir, Stephen Chaudoin, Jim Fearon, Abbey Steele

            Watch the video here