Johan Brosché

I am an Associate Professor (Docent) currently working in four research projects. 1) Causes of Peace – The Botswana, Malawi and Zambia “Zone of Peace” 2) What are they fighting for? Conflict Issues and the Resolution of Civil War 3) Crossing the Rubicon? The Dynamics of Restraint in Civil War and 4) Conflicts, Connections, Complexities: Towards a Multi-layered Understanding of Civil War. I am convening the courses Causes of Peace and War and Peace on Film.

During the fall of 2016, I was a guest researcher at Durham University. From June 2008 until February 2014, I was a PhD-candidate at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University. My dissertation deals with communal conflicts and why they turn violent in some regions but not in others. I use a comparative approach, based on field-work, and compare three different regions – Darfur, Eastern Sudan and Jonglei – of Sudan and Southern Sudan.

I spent the spring of 2012 as a visiting scholar at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. During my time as PhD-candidate, I also served as a member of an academic task force set up in order to support the work of the UNSG Special Envoy on Darfur (Jan Eliasson). In addition, I have worked as a consultant for the Mediation Support Unit at the Department of Political Affairs, United Nations.

From August 2005, until I started the PhD-program I worked within the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). Before taking up the position as project leader for the Uppsala Conflict Database in 2006 I worked as a research assistant with prevention and human security issues.

My current research is carried out within four projects.

1). Causes of Peace – The Botswana, Malawi and Zambia “Zone of Peace”

Botswana, Malawi and Zambia constitute a “Zone of Peace” spared from violent conflict since independence. The project aims to explain why peace has prevailed in these countries despite being located in the world’s most volatile continent with all their neighbors struck by conflict.

2). What are they fighting for? Conflict Issues and the Resolution of Civil War

What are the issues that parties fight civil wars over? How do the issues at stake influence the possibilities of conflict resolution? Surprisingly, we have little knowledge in these regards, even though all civil wars involve contested issues and despite issues being one of the three cornerstones of the concept of conflict.

In this project we delve deeper into the question of conflict issues in civil wars. To do this we will (1) create a theoretically derived and empirically validated typology of conflict issues (2) based on the typology, create and disseminate a global dataset on conflict issues, and, (3) use these theoretical and empirical insights to examine – qualitatively and quantitatively – how the question of conflict issues affect possibilities for conflict resolution.

3). Crossing the Rubicon? The Dynamics of Restraint in Civil War

In recent times, more than half of all people killed in civil wars died in Afghanistan or Syria. This raises a question to which we have surprisingly few answers so far: Why do some civil wars become so much more severe than others?

This project has set out to find answers to this important question, with a focus on the sources of restraint in civil war. Deepening knowledge on restraint in war is crucial for building resilient societies and contain existing civil wars.

4). Conflicts, Connections, Complexities: Towards a Multi-layered Understanding of Civil War.

This project examines why some civil wars – like Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan – become complex interlinked patchworks of different conflict types while others do not.