On the surface, it should be easy. Practitioners and policy makers always require better knowledge to make informed decisions, and academics (nearly) always seek that their research makes an impact in the “real” world. Yet this rarely works out. In most cases academic-practice-policy dialogues, forums, meetings and conferences rarely produce the envisaged coming together of… Read more »
Author: Siri Camilla Aas Rustad
The First Steps in the PRIO-Uppsala Connection: Peter Wallensteen Interviewed by Siri Aas Rustad
Peter Wallensteen, interviewed by Siri Aas Rustad PRIO was the engine of our Nordic peace research network. To ‘go to PRIO’ meant to be updated on the state of the art, to find out what was going on. The ideas generated could then be taken back home and used to build up one’s own activities…. Read more »
Will There Be Peace in Westeros?
In my last Game of Thrones blog post I looked into whether there were any similarities between the War of the Five Kings and modern war in the real world. I found a surprisingly large number of similarities. Now that we have seen the end GoT, and we know who sits on the (non)-Iron Throne… Read more »
The Clash of Guns and Swords: Game of Thrones and Reality
Are there any similarities between the bloody war in Game of Thrones (GoT) and modern conflicts? The battle fields are certainly quite different, and dragons have very little to do with today’s conflicts (although they may allude to weapons of mass destruction). However, if we look beyond the fighting and fantasy, and study the logic… Read more »
Fewer Lives Being Lost in Conflicts
In 2017, approximately 90,000 people died as the direct result of armed conflict. This figure is down for the third year in a row, and is now 31 percent lower than in 2014. Nearly a third of all conflicts – and four of the 10 most serious wars worldwide – now involve a local division… Read more »
New Mapping of Children Affected by Armed Conflict
This weekend, decision-makers from all over the world will come together to discuss current and future security challenges at the Munich Security Conference (MSC), which has become the major global forum for discussion of security policy. At the conference, Save the Children will launch its new report The War on Children: Time to End Grave… Read more »
Education and Systematic Group Inequalities in Nigeria
On the night between 14 and 15 April, 2014, 276 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram from their school in Chibok in Borno State in Northeastern Nigeria. The Islamist terrorist group does not believe that girls should attend school, and these girls were targeted precisely because they were in school. However, conservative views on gender and education is only one reason why many girls in… Read more »
The Window of Opportunity Closes in Nigeria
On 14 February, the population of Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, were supposed to go to the polls to elect a new president. This election might have proven a watershed in Nigerian history. For the first time, the opposition had a realistic opportunity to take over from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which has held power ever… Read more »