This award was funded through the Social and Behavioral Dimensions of National Security, Conflict, and Cooperation competition, a joint venture between NSF and the Department of Defense.
The challenges posed by insurgencies and the threat of terrorism require a new generation of academic and professional leaders who embrace a multidisciplinary, cross-boundary approach. In particular, these future leaders need to develop approaches that combine security provisions (by U.S. forces and allies), economic development and political development. A binding constraint on such research has been a lack of trained young scholars to evaluate interventions and develop theory. This project will organize and lead a six-day multidisciplinary training workshop on the political economy of terrorism and insurgency. The workshop will be aimed at Ph.D. students and early career faculty, but will also include US AID personnel and officers drawn from the U.S. military. The operating premise for this workshop is simple and demonstrable: the most fruitful way to communicate new insights from research on the political economy of terrorism is by engaging the next generation of researchers in an intense, multidisciplinary learning environment. The specific goal of the workshop is to equip a cohort of young researchers and practitioners with the theoretical tools, background, data and contacts to conduct fresh research on the political economy of terrorism and insurgency.
