The Conflict Analysis Research Centre (CARC) at the University of Kent is a transdisciplinary centre based in the School of Politics and International Relations. CARC also draws on the expertise of other Schools and research programs such as Anthropology, Psychology, the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Sciences, post-Colonial Studies, Economics, and the Centre for Journalism. CARC is the institutional home of the Conflict Research Society and hosts leading academic and policy fellows across the UK and globally.
The aims of the Conflict Analysis Research Centre are:
- To be a centre of excellence in the study of political conflict, developing original theory and analysis of conflicts.
- To undertake and publish international quality research in the broad areas of peace, conflict, security and human rights.
- To support creative transdisciplinary bapproaches to the understanding and transformation of violent conflict.
- To build partnerships with policy and practitioner communities with a view to connecting theory and practice.
The Conflict Analysis Research Centre was preceded by the Centre for Conflict and Peace and its forerunner the Centre for the Analysis of Conflict , which was started in 1966 as an inter-university research project working on conflict issues in Malaysia & Singapore, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Lebanon and South Africa, under the guidance of pioneering academics such as John Burton, John Groom, Chris Mitchell, Keith Webb, Hugh Miall and Feargal Cochrane. Professor Neophytos Loizides is currently the Centre’s Director. CARC currently hosts grants from the ERC, ORA7, the ESRC, APEX, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
CARC’s intellectual remit is intentionally broad and transdisciplinary. While originally rooted within politics and international relations, its theoretical and empirical interests have extended across the social sciences (physchology and economics) and beyond. Currently, CARC projects range from work in the humanities on forced migration and post-colonialism to collaborative work with mathematics and statistics for instance on estimating the sizes of diasporic groups in post-conflict societies. CARC has also a long history and presence in applying conflict research to real-world situations as well as setting new standards in professional mediation for instance currently serving the Mediation and Negotiation Program of the Organization of American States (OAS). CARC’s policy engagements are underpinned by research in the areas of constitutional design, the nature and evolution of mediation, critical approaches to the study of terrorism and political violence, as well as gender and human rights. Recent and past engagements of CARC in advising peace mediations include Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Bosnia, Sudan, Colombia and North Macedonia. Following the Russian invansion of Ukraine, CARC academics have published analyses and peace proposals e.g. in International Affairs, the Toda Institute and the Conversation.