With the horrific recent events in Ukraine, the fall of Kabul, and the rise of populism, there are major questions to be asked surrounding state and non-state violence.

• Are we entering a new era of global politics?
• Can frameworks and theories further our understanding of state and non-state violence?
• How can we enhance our understanding of political violence?

These are the kinds of questions we hope to discuss in our Postgraduate Research Conference this June.

Keynote Speaker: Dr Tim Wilson, University of St Andrews

'Sharpening our analytical tools at the slaughter-bench of history. How should we study political violence in the 21st century?'

Dr. Wilson will provide some thoughts on future trends in political violence but also what we can learn from the past. He will also reflect upon why in practice meshing analysis of anti-state and state violence has proven so challenging.

Dr Wilson’s research interests and media appearances range widely over the past, present and future of terrorism and political violence. He is especially interested in why such horrors take the particular forms that they do. His first book Frontiers of Violence – an ambitious comparison of violence in the contested borderlands of Ulster and Upper Silesia between 1918 and 1922– was nominated for the Royal Historical Society’s prestigious Whitfield Prize in 2010. His second book Killing Strangers: How Political Violence Became Modern, was published in September 2020. Both books were published by Oxford University Press. He assumed the Directorship of CSTPV in September 2016.

We are pleased to acknowledge financial support for this year’s conference from the Postgraduate Led Initiative Fund, provided by The Graduate School, Queen’s University Belfast.

Download the Conference Pack here.

Timetable [subject to change]:

9:30-10:30: Dr. Tim Wilson Keynote

10:30-10:45: Tea and Coffee 

10:45-12:30: Panel 1- Terrorism and state responses to terrorism

12:30-13:15: Lunch

13:15-15:00: Panel 2 - Challenging and re-defining global norms

15:00-15:10: Tea and Coffee 

15:10-17:00: Panel 3 - Understanding counterterrorism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

17:00-17:10: Closing remarks by Prof. Richard English