Research

Research activities at the Center for Conflict Studies (CCS) are characterized by a high level of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary cooperation. All together, 15 different fields of study are represented.

One of CCS’s focuses is conflict dynamics that push or result in social change. On the one hand, social change is often conflict-charged, because there are always winners and losers when society changes. In addition, social change often leads to the erosion of social norms and institutional forms, which create new arrangements of potential conflict parties.

On the other hand, nonviolent processing of conflict also denotes the possibility of social change and with it, the social institutionalization of a pluralism of opinions, interests, and values. Social change can be seen, for example, in the transformation of the meaning of the nation-state, in societal modernization processes, in the changes in common values and identities, in the handling of past collective crimes, and in the structural changes of the international system.

The research focuses which have been established at the CCS are the following: