About Us
The Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) is a multi-campus, interdisciplinary network of scholars engaged in research on politically motivated and organized criminal violence worldwide.
Currently headquartered at Princeton University, it launched in 2009 at Stanford University in collaboration with the University of California Institute on Conflict and Collaboration (IGCC). ESOC was initially inspired by a desire among its founders to provide evidence-based prescriptions to practitioners wrestling with the challenges of reducing violence and stabilizing conflict zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries facing terrorist threats.
As ESOC has grown, its substantive focus has broadened. Today, ESOC’s affiliated scholars have broad interests ranging from sub state political violence (e.g., terrorism and civil wars and their effects) to great power conflict, spanning gray zone activities such as disinformation and cyber attacks, and support of governance through economic and political tools.
Recent Publications
- 2023ESOC Working Paper Series
Recent years have seen growing concerns expressed by political leaders throughout the west about rising Chinese “influence” around the world. Yet…
- 2023Modern War Institute
It’s been described as the “terrorist’s dilemma”—the trade-offs between maintaining security and exercising command and control that terrorist organizations must make. But how can counterterrorism campaigns be designed to exploit that dilemma? What do government agencies and organizations charged with countering terrorist threats need to know about those pressures? And how should an understanding of the dilemma inform the development of counterterrorism policy?
- 2023ESOC Working Paper Series
Explanations for the well-established relationship between mining and conflict interpret violence near resource extraction sites as part of…
- 2023ESOC Working Paper Series
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 is associated with a rapid collapse of the Afghan economy. In lieu of official data, attempts…
Events
We are pleased to announce the fifth year of the ESOC Mentorship Program. The purpose of this program is to support an international community of early-career investigators engaged in top-notch empirical and theoretical research on conflict. This one-year program term will foster scholarship through…