MISSION STATEMENT

The current war in Ukraine and the withdrawal from Afghanistan have thoroughly shaken the foundations of the foreign and security policy of the Netherlands and its partners in the West. The war in Ukraine brought the spectre of nuclear war back on the agenda and cast a shadow over the idea that economic interdependence diminishes the likelihood of war. The withdrawal from Afghanistan raised further doubts about the prospects of military interventions to export democracy and human rights. In a more general sense, the recent landslide developments are transforming the character of violent conflict, collective security, and peacebuilding interventions in a substantial way. In many settings, we see the emergence of a dangerous mixture of protracted violence, climate vulnerability, global and local cross-boundary mobilization that requires a better understanding. New and non-state security actors are growing in significance, for example China and the African Union, but also Private Military and Security Companies. Many see an increasing cross-over between the work of humanitarian, peacebuilding, development and military actors. Whereas in the 1990s the attention of peace, security, and conflict scholars shifted to the so-called global south, growing extremism and doubts about state legitimacy in Europe point to the continuing urgency of exploring the fundaments of peace and security in our own society.

The return of interstate war in Europe and the crisis of liberal interventionism urge us to evaluate our policies, assess their underlying history and philosophy, and to follow the transformation of the armed forces and their institutional embeddedness that we expect to see over the coming years with a critical eye. This will be a complex endeavour and requires the expertise from many academic disciplines, including political science, history, law, security studies, international relations, development studies, anthropology, economics, psychology, religion studies, pedagogy, and sociology, as well as the natural sciences, spatial science, and medicine.

As a recent report has demonstrated, the Netherlands has a vibrant pool of academics in all of these disciplines and a vast range of educational programmes teaching students the foundations of conflict analysis, peacebuilding, and the international governance of security in various spatial and temporal settings. However, the field of Peace and Conflict Studies in the Netherlands lacks an institutional framework that encourages and supports collaboration across institutions and disciplines and allows us to move beyond the provision of day-to-day problem-solving. In contrast to several other countries, there is no national academic umbrella organization focusing on Peace and Conflict Studies, nor on the most adjacent fields of International Relations and Security Studies.

The newly established Peace and Conflict Studies Network in the Netherlands will fill this gap. It has started off by bringing together relevant scholars and institutes from the Universities of Groningen, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Twente, and Leiden, the Vrije Universiteit, Radboud University, Erasmus University, the Netherlands Defence Academy, and the University of Applied Sciences Stenden.

The overall aims of the PCS Network are to provide a platform for collaboration in research, teaching and policy advice, to showcase Dutch expertise in this field and to establish PCS as a distinct, interdisciplinary field of study that is recognized as such by funding agencies.

• To support PhD students in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies by developing tailormade education and training
• To facilitate collaboration between the existing educational programmes in Peace and Conflict Studies and organize additional seminars and/or summer schools
• To create a knowledge platform for societal use (e.g. for media, practitioners, professionals, NGOs)
• To facilitate cooperation in research (e.g. for the Nationale Wetenschapsagenda)
• To make Dutch Peace and Conflict Studies visible at an international level by reaching out to similar national networks.