Research & Initiatives
Research Clusters
Civil War Dynamics
Understanding the causes, processes, and recurrence of conflict and civil wars.
Transitional Societies
Understanding peace, negotiation, demobilization and reintegration.
Peace Durability
Understanding democracy, power-sharing, and federalism in post-conflict societies.
Ongoing Projects
United States Institute of Peace (2022-2024)
Reinvigorating Multilateral Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding
Preventing Civil War Recurrence: Local Partnership for Effective Reintegration
Toward understanding the role of multilateral institutions in preventing civil war recurrence
This two-year project's goal is to understand how multilateral peacebuilding efforts impact the transformation of former insurgents' political, social, and economic institutions. It will study how these interventions help reconfigure these institutions, ensure reintegration, and durable conflict termination and recurrence. The project will identify areas of intervention where locally based organizations and partnerships with multilateral institutions can help strengthen peace transitions.
Principal investigators: Jacques Bertrand, Noel Anderson, and Alexandre Pelletier (Laval U)
SSHRC-Insight Grant (2021-2026)
Return to Civil War: Insurgent Groups and the Decision to Abandon Peace
Toward understanding the critical factors that ensure durable peace
This research programme studies insurgent organizations’ evolution during wartime and the post-war period. It aims to explain why some former combatants become integrated into society’s political, economic, and social sectors, while others remain precluded from participation in the post-war state. It identifies three sets of factors—state interventions, insurgent organizational structures, and wartime legacies—as critical to war-to-peace transitions, as well as the transformation of insurgent political, social, and economic institutions into the post-war period.
Principal investigators: Jacques Bertrand, Noel Anderson, and Alexandre Pelletier (Laval U)