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
- 2024Science Advances
Do search engine algorithms systematically expose users to content from unreliable sites? There is widespread concern that they do, but little…
- 2024Economica
Why do modern states allow parts of their territory to be governed by non-state actors? We study this question using the Frontier Crimes…
- 2024Sage Journals
Recent years have seen growing concerns expressed by political leaders throughout the west about rising Chinese “influence” around the world. Yet…
- 2024Empirical Studies of Conflict Project
This article introduces a dataset on the covert use of social media to influence politics by promoting propaganda, advocating controversial…
Events
Submission Deadline: January 15th, 2025
The Empirical Studies of Conflict network (ESOC) will host its first ever research and policy conference in Asia, held from June 2 to June 4 at National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei. Research panels will be held on June 3rd and 4th; an optional opening…