The Evolution of Civil Wars Research: From Civil War to Political Violence

In this reflection I argue that the last 25 years have seen three broad 'waves' of work on civil conflict, broadly understood. The first responded to the civil wars and ethnic conflicts of the 1990s, while the second expanded dramatically to take on a variety of questions around violence and organisation in civil wars. The current wave is moving the field towards a broader study of political violence writ large, rather than civil wars per se. I situate the evolution of my own work within this broader trajectory, in particular its engagement with both the second and third waves.