Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University

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Uppsala
Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University

Since its founding in 1971, the department has established itself as a key producer of cutting-edge research and high-quality datasets.

It offers educational programs for some 700 students and hosts the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP).

09/06/2026

The datasets covering 2025 from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) have now been released. Here are some notable figures:

📊 The number of conflicts between two or more governments doubled for the second consecutive year, rising from two in 2023 to eight in 2025. This is the highest number recorded since UCDP's conflict data collection began in 1946.

📊 UCDP recorded 65 active conflicts involving at least one state, up from 61 the previous year, marking the highest number since the statistics began in 1946.

📊 UCDP data shows approximately 76,500 fatalities from one-sided violence, an increase of more than 400 per cent compared with the previous year. This is the highest level recorded since 1994 during the Rwandan genocide.

📊 Despite the increase in conflicts involving states, non-state conflicts continued to decline. Conflicts between non-state groups, such as drug cartels, caused approximately 14,500 fatalities, the lowest number since 2013.

🔗 Read more 👉 https://www.uu.se/en/news/2026/2026-06-09-ucdp-record-number-of-conflicts-between-states

🔗 The datasets are available through the UCDP website 👉
https://www.uu.se/en/department/peace-and-conflict-research/research/ucdp

🔗 A comprehensive analysis of the 2025 data is published in the Journal of Peace Research, https://doi.org/10.1093/jopres/xjag046

05/06/2026

Yesterday, we celebrated the amazing team of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and their completion of the 2025 data, scheduled for release on 9 June .

UCDP Director Magnus Öberg thanked the team for their hard work and noted that over the past year, datasets from UCDP have been downloaded more than 85,000 times and cited in more than 1,700 academic publications.

04/06/2026

Yesterday, we celebrated the launch of Volume 13 (2026) of the Pax et Bellum Journal, an open-access, student-run academic journal dedicated to Peace and Conflict Studies. The journal provides a platform for students and recent graduates to contribute to interdisciplinary scholarship, share original research, and engage with a diverse range of issues and perspectives within the field.

This year’s edition features five insightful articles:

🔸 An Empirical Analysis of Climate-Conflict Cycles: The Syrian Civil War & The 2023 Earthquakes – Michaela Peters-Salah, Rotary Peace Fellow and Master’s student at Uppsala University

🔹 Victimhood and Hindutva Ideology: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in India – Aksh*ta Anand, Ghent University

🔸 Talking the Walk: Peace, Inclusivity and (De)Polarisation – Aisha Erenstein, graduate of the Master’s Programme in Peace and Conflict Studies at Uppsala University

🔹 Customary Pathways to Justice: Transitional Mechanisms of Reconciliation in Malawi’s Post-Authoritarian Transition – MacDonald Nyirenda, Master’s student at Leipzig University and Addis Ababa University

🔸 Gender, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding: Assessing the Contribution of Women to the Colombian Peace Process –
Sarah Mullally, graduate of the Master’s Programme in Latin American Studies at Leiden University

🔗 The journal is available to read online here. 👉 https://journals.uu.se/pax-et-bellum/issue/view/146

The articles were reviewed by a team of 13 students from our department. Jan David Glässner served as editor-in-chief and Associate Professor Sophia Hatz provided guidance.

The editorial board, pictured from left to right: Amanda Alagic, Moira Lehmann, Jan Glässner, Laura Coburn & Olivia Olofsson

21/05/2026

Yesterday, the 2026 Peter Wallensteen Lecture by Professor T.V Paul offered a riveting analysis of how the pursuit of status affects the decisions of great powers.

After painting a historical and conceptual backdrop, Professor Paul proceeded to argue that great powers are driven not only by security and material interests but also by a deep struggle for status, recognition, and hierarchical dominance in international politics. When states experience anxiety over declining or insufficiently recognised status or if they feel that their aspirations are not reciprocated by other powers, this can lead to aggressive policies, violence, and conflict.

Professor Ashok Swain explained the significance of the lecture series and introduced the speaker, while Professor Desirée Nilsson offered concluding remarks. Professor Peter Wallensteen himself concluded the Q&A with some tender and contemplative words to the audience.

We thank Professor Paul for a thought-provoking lecture. We also extend a special thanks to a large group of diplomats from all over the globe for attending.

We will release an audio recording of the lecture in the coming weeks.

***

The annual Peter Wallensteen lecture honours the department’s founder, Professor Peter Wallensteen and his enduring legacy in peace studies.

T.V. Paul is Distinguished James McGill Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

23/04/2026

For the 2026 Peter Wallensteen Lecture, we are delighted to welcome Professor T.V. Paul from McGill University. In his talk, “When Peace Unravels: Status Recognition and the Return of Great Power Conflicts”, Professor Paul will explore how status functions as an existential identity marker for great powers and how unfulfilled status aspirations are a root cause of great-power behaviour.

Against the backdrop of the radical shifts in US foreign and security policy during President Trump’s second term, Russia’s four-year brutal war in Ukraine and China’s turn away from its proclaimed “peaceful rise,” Professor Paul will discuss when and why great powers abandon relatively peaceful grand strategies for reasons of status and what this means for global stability today.

The talk will be followed by Q&A and a reception.

📅 Time: May 20, 14:00
📍 Location: Uppsala University Main Building, lecture hall IX
📝 Registration: To attend the lecture, please sign up here:
https://doit.medfarm.uu.se/bin/kurt3/kurt/8902611

The annual Peter Wallensteen lecture honours the department’s founder, Professor Peter Wallensteen and his enduring legacy in peace studies.

T.V. Paul is Distinguished James McGill Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

02/03/2026

🎓 We congratulate Alexandre Raffoul on successfully defending his thesis “The Logics of Multi-Ethnic Coalitions: Power-Sharing, Party Systems, and Ethnic Conflict Management”.

The opponent found the dissertation to be a terrific piece of research, which has earned well-deserved peer recognition in leading disciplinary journals, with findings that carry clear policy relevance.

Alexandre has provided a helpful summary of the key findings and their implications, available on our website: https://www.uu.se/en/department/peace-and-conflict-research/news/archive/2026-02-25-why-some-power-sharing-governments-sustain-peace---and-others-dont

The DPCR extends its sincere thanks to Professor Stefan Wolff of the University of Birmingham for serving as Alexandre’s opponent. We are also grateful to Erika Forsberg and Kristine Hoglund for their dedicated supervision. In addition, we would like to thank the grading committee, consisting of Annekatrin Deglow, Roland Kostić (Uppsala Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies) and Joakim Öjendal (School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University).

06/02/2026

📢 We’re recruiting two PhD candidates in Peace and Conflict Research 👇

The Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University is advertising two fully funded doctoral (PhD) positions:
🔹 One general PhD position in peace and conflict research
🔹 One PhD position at the Alva Myrdal Centre for Nuclear Disarmament

We encourage applicants, who are eager to contribute to a vibrant, international research environment to apply:
🗓️ Application deadline: 25 March 2026
📌 Location: Uppsala, Sweden

👉 Full details and application instructions: https://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/join-us/jobs-and-vacancies/job-details?query=896407

05/02/2026

The application for fully funded 2027 fellowships is now open—for both master’s degree and professional development certificate programs at one of the Rotary Peace Centers.

Candidates have until 15 May to submit applications to The Rotary Foundation.

Learn more about the Peace Fellowships here: https://www.rotary.org/en/our-programs/peace-fellowships

Check eligibility criteria and the application process:
https://my.rotary.org/en/peace-fellowship-application

Fellowship information at Uppsala University:
https://my.rotary.org/en/document/uppsala-rotary-peace-center-fact-sheet

27/01/2026

📢 We’re Hiring a Professor of Peace and Conflict Research! ⬇️

We are looking for an internationally recognized academic to join our ambitious and supportive research community.

This is a permanent, full-time role where you will:
✨ Lead and advance research in peace and conflict studies
✨ Teach and supervise students at all levels
✨ Contribute to further developing the department’s strong research and teaching environment.
✨ Engage with partners both inside and outside academia through research and knowledge exchange

📍 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
📆 Application deadline: 26 March

🔗 Apply / Learn more: https://uu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:851675/

09/01/2026

💐 Today our research community had the great joy of hearing Maxine Leis impressive defence of her thesis ‘Signals of Violence, Patterns of Flight: Predicting and Explaining Conflict-Related Mobility’. Please join us in congratulating Maxine!

We thank Professor Julian Wucherpfennig from the Hertie School in Berlin, who served as opponent as well as Maxine’s supervisors Professor Håvard Hegre and Professor Nina von Uexkull. We would also like to thank the grading committee consisting of Professor Joakim Palme, Associate Professor Sophia Hatz and Associate Professor Steven Miller from Stockholm University.

Maxine’s dissertation examines mobility resulting from different forms of violence and natural hazards. A core objective of the research is to improve the forecasting and estimation of conflict-related mobility by deepening our understanding of how these shocks shape population movements. The project is part of the Mistra Geopolitics Research School.

The dissertation includes four essays:

💡 Essay I: Shows that detailed features of political violence (how it escalates, where it occurs, and who is involved) improve one-year-ahead predictions of refugee and asylum seeker outflows.

💡 Essay II: Demonstrates anticipatory mobility in Somalia, showing that civilians move in response to nearby violence risk, not only violence in their own district.

💡 Essay III: Estimates the longer-term migration impacts of organised violence, finding that state-based conflict is associated with approximately 2.2 million net migration differences across Africa and the Middle East (2015–2020).

💡 Essay IV: Examines household mobility in Bangladesh, showing how political violence and natural hazards jointly shape mobility and immobility depending on household resources. This paper is available as a pre-print in Nature Communications Earth & Environment: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-03086-3

🔗 The extensive summary (Kappa) is available here: https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A2015340&dswid=-4117

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