In Practice Landing Page

Through In Practice: Lessons from Research, HFG scholars explore how their work may illuminate contemporary problems of violence. Drawing from diverse disciplines, the series highlights research that proposes solutions to violence or offers new perspectives on current or recent conflicts.

Contributors connect their findings to urgent challenges such as the impact of third-party diplomacy on conflicts like the war in Ukraine, the ways emerging diseases, including COVID-19 and avian flu, may bring both illness and violence, and how political violence can fuel migration.

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When Militaries Turn Against Authoritarians: Lessons from Tunisia and the Arab Spring

In Tunisia, a single leader of an elite security force deployed to protect the Interior Ministry was far more influential than long-standing resentments and conflicting interests within the ranks. HFG grantee Jean-Baptiste Gallopin explains how and why militaries defect based on his research.

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How Emerging Diseases Can Spread Conflict and Violence 

Ore Koren, an associate professor of international relations and methodology in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University Bloomington and a 2022 HFG Distinguished Scholar, explains the connection between emerging zoonotic diseases, such as bird flu or Ebola, and violence.

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In Ukraine and Elsewhere, Is Third-Party Diplomacy Helpful in Ending Wars?

Research by Eric Min, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles and a 2020 HFG Distinguished Scholar, suggests that negotiations borne of external third-party pressure are not only likely to fail but also liable to be exploited in service of belligerents’ war efforts.

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In the Balkans, Barriers Made Neighbors Bad

HFG-supported research by Mila Dragojević, a professor of politics at The University of the South and a 2014 HFG Distinguished Scholar, found that the physical barricades ethnic Serbs set up in some Croatian communities in the 1990s furthered “political ethnicization” and channeled residents into violently opposed political entities.

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Violence Against Public Figures Fuels Central American Immigration

“Implementing policies directed at [the] root causes [of] violence would be far more effective at reducing unauthorized migration than building walls or forcing relocation,” concludes 2020-2021 HFG Distinguished Scholar Laura Blume, author of Cataloging Murder: Tracking Violence Against Public Figures in Central America.

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