First round of new projects for semester 1 2025-26 Interested in gaining first-hand experience in academic research? Apply for a student fellowship with the RPA Conflict & Society and work as a student research assistant on one of the projects below. Fellowships welcome students from all backgrounds and offer an opportunity to develop research skills and contribute to ongoing academic work.

Tuesday 15 September | UvA Conflict Society Next Tuesday 15 September from 11.00-13.00 at Bushuis room E1.01E, we will be hosting the next Writing Violence session. The session is open to anyone working on sensitive or conflict-related issues (understood broadly), at any career stage. It's not necessary to have attended prior workshops to join in. Our sessions work with the Chatham house rules, to ensure a care-full space where we can be jointly vulnerable and explorative.

DEADLINE EXTENDED Student Fellowships – Apply to have an RPA funded Student Fellow (RA) work on your research project. Starting September 2026 Could you use a bachelor-level student assistant for your research on conflict and violence? The Research Priority Area (RPA) Conflict and Society facilitates bachelor’s student research assistance on projects of FMG researchers. We offer fellowships of €1,000 per year per bachelor student research assistant, which corresponds to about 53 hours of work (€19 per hour) per student.

Student Fellowships – Apply to have an RPA funded Student Fellow (RA) work on your research project. Starting September 2026 Could you use a bachelor-level student assistant for your research on conflict and violence? The Research Priority Area (RPA) Conflict and Society facilitates bachelor’s student research assistance on projects of FMG researchers. We offer fellowships of €1,000 per year per bachelor student research assistant, which corresponds to about 53 hours of work (€19 per hour) per student.

Join ACCS and the RPA Conflict & Society for On One Stage, a powerful theatre performance created by students and staff of the University of Amsterdam, exploring conflict and identity through A…

Join ACCS and the RPA Conflict & Society for On One Stage, a powerful theatre performance created by students and staff of the University of Amsterdam, exploring conflict and identity through Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed! Over the past few months, members of the University of Amsterdam community – students and staff who had never met before – have come together.

Are you an UvA-based researcher working on political or social conflict, violence, or their memories & legacies? Join us on Wednesday 10 June, 15:00–17:00 in REC B1.03* – wi…

Are you an UvA-based researcher working on political or social conflict, violence, or their memories & legacies? Join us on Wednesday 10 June, 15:00–17:00 - with a borrel afterwards! - for the launch of the UvA Conflict Community. This community aims to connect people, resources and support, and is meant for all colleagues across all faculties researching and teaching conflict, war and/or violence.

Lunch Talk by Ronay Bakan, organized by ACCS and the RPA Conflict & Society Date 12 March 2026 | Time12:00 -13:30 | Location Roeterseilandcampus - Room B3.05 Emerging technologies of war and counterinsurgency increasingly target urban landscapes, populations, and infrastructures. This talk will explore the role of the built environment in counterinsurgency campaigns. Dr. Bakan will address questions such as: Why do states expend the time and resources to engage in developmental projects targeting urban spaces in the midst of counterinsurgency campaigns?

Semester 2, Academic Year 2025–2026 Application deadline: 18 February Are you interested in gaining hands-on experience in academic research on conflict, violence, authoritarianism, and related social issues? Applications are now open for Student Fellowships for Semester 2 of the 2025–2026 academic year. Student Fellowships offer bachelor students the opportunity to work as Research Assistants (RAs) on ongoing research projects led by UvA scholars across a range of disciplines.

The RPA Conflict & Society is very happy to announce Eda Kiriscioglu as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Conflict & Society Research Priority Area (RPA) at the University of Amsterdam. Eda works on the GRIID project (Government Responses to Internal and International Displacement), which examines how states respond to displacement through protective and repressive policies and practices across different levels of governance.

Studying Experiences, Imaginaries and Legacies of Conflict, War and Violence across the Social Sciences and the Humanities Thursday 5 February 2026, 09:30-17:00 at the Vondelzaal, UB (University of…

RPA Conflict and Society Sudent Fellowships – Call for conflict researchers looking for research assistants for the third round of the fellowship programme (starting February 2026) Could you use a bachelor-level student assistant for your research on conflict and violence? The Research Priority Area (RPA) Conflict and Society facilitates bachelor’s student research assistance on projects of FMG researchers. We offer fellowships of €1,000 per year per bachelor student research assistant, which corresponds to about 53 hours of work (€19 per hour) per student.

Responsible Digital Transformations (RDT) is pleased to announce a new call for Seed Grant proposals, with a thematic focus on Datafied Warfare & Societal Resilience. Contemporary warfare and security practices are significantly shaped by digitisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), with all aspects of conflict becoming increasingly data-driven. Data analytics and AI are crucial in modern conflicts for information gathering, military strategy, automated targeting, and battlefield simulation, enhancing precision, speed, and autonomy of warfare systems.

Studying Experiences, Imaginaries and Legacies of Conflict, War and Violence across the Social Sciences and the Humanities Thursday 5 February 2026, 09:30-17:00 at the Vondelzaal, UB (University of Amsterdam)* This interdisciplinary workshop brings together scholars at all career stages (including PhD researchers) from both the Social Sciences and the Humanities who study conflict, war, and violence at the UvA. Despite clear societal relevance, shared research interests, and overlapping research experiences, disciplinary and institutional boundaries continue to hinder interdisciplinary understanding and cooperation.

Lunch talk by Prof. Miguel García-Sánchez, hosted by the Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies (ACCS) and the RPA Conflict and Society In this lunch talk, on Demcember 12th, Prof. Miguel García-Sánchez will examine the intricate relationship between public opinion and the 2016 peace agreement, drawing on more than one decade of research on peace-related issues. The presentation will highlight how citizen attitudes toward peace are complex, multidimensional, evolve over time, and are shaped by elite discourse, political polarization, and expectations of future benefits derived from the agreement.

Workshop with Dr. Sebastian van Baalen, hosted by ACCS and the RPA Conflict and Society Join us for this writing workshop with Sebastian van Baalen, Associate Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden. This workshop will offer a practical guide to moving from research to published article, taking participants step-by-step through the writing, submission, revision, and proof stages of the publication process.

Last week, the RPA Conflict & Society officially kicked off the Student Fellowships for the first semester of this year. 12 student fellows work on 10 projects, ranging from issues such as violence against children, intergenerational mental health, global conflicts that receive little media attention, experiences of microaggressions, the digitalisation of drug markets, cannabis supply modes, and Black Studies. They use different approaches, from experiments and surveys to fieldwork, data analysis, and systematic reviews. 

Developing a deeper and multidisciplinary understanding about the dynamics of conflict.

The Conflict & Society Research Priority Area (RPA) Officially Launched at the UvA Last week, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) celebrated the official launch of the Conflict & Society Research Priority Area (RPA) with an all-day event that brought together scholars from across disciplines to explore new perspectives on conflict and violence. The program opened with an introduction by principal investigators Dr.

Against the backdrop of the 2024 U.S. elections, political scientist Lilliana Mason guides us through the divide between American Democrats and Republicans on questions of social equality. She’ll dive into the GOP’s internal struggle between those resisting progress and those fighting for a pluralistic America, and its profound implications for the future of democratic life. Date: 13 December 2024 | Time 20:00 uur | Location: SPUI25 More information: 

RPA Conflict & Society awards €125,000 to 11 groundbreaking FMG projects on conflict, inequality, and polarisation. Discover the selected research initiatives!

The gap between Democrats and Republicans on social equality deepens. Diversity vs. tradition fuels polarisation, while extreme views and us-vs-them thinking threaten American democracy.

Against the backdrop of the 2024 U.S. elections, political scientist Lilliana Mason guides us through the divide between American Democrats and Republicans on questions of social equality. She’ll dive...