Connecting Scientists, Human Security Elites and Ordinary Conflict-Affected Citizens
In addition to cranking out new scientific articles on the nuclear taboo, women’s human rights and the protection of civilians, Human Security Lab engaged in numerous initiatives this year to foster connections between communities of scientists, human security elites, and the affected communities of conflict-affected citizens they aim to serve.
The Lab hosted a webinar on “Civilian Self-Protection in Armed Conflicts” this fall to help students, practitioners and members of the public make sense of conflict dynamics in Sudan, Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, Haiti and other contexts. Moderated by Dr. Charli Carpenter, and drawing online participants from five continents, the webinar convened a panel of researchers and practitioners to discuss when, why and how civilians protect themselves when human security elites sometimes fail to do so. The panel included academics who have pioneered this field of study including Dr. Peace Medie and Dr. Betcy Jose; practitioner Marc Linning of the NGO Center for Civilians in Conflict, and scholars whose work has carried them across these divides: Dr. Emily Paddon Rhoads, and Dr. Juan Masullo.
After the Israel / Gaza conflict broke out, Carpenter also herself participated and co-organized a virtual teach-in on the laws of war drawing together affected civilians, students, and members of the wider public. “I had students who had lost friends in the Gaza bombing, and other students who had lost family in the October 7 attacks,” Carpenter said. “It threw into sharp relief how the divide between elite understandings on international law and ordinary peoples’ understandings can hobble conflict resolution. And universities and scientists have an important role to play in illuminating how international law can be a pacifying force.” The event, which included international law, ethics and policy scholars Jamie Rowen, Sohail Hashmi and David Mednicoff, made the case that successful conflict resolution hinges in part on better understanding among ordinary civilians of the international laws of war.
The desires of publics in insecure contexts often differ from the perspectives of global human security elites. Indeed, elites themselves often differ on the very meaning of human security, according to data collected by Charli Carpenter, Kevin Young and Bernhard Leidner.
Professor Kevin Young, an expert on global elites, launched a new dataset this year to study elites in multilateral organizations to better understand what differentiates them from one another, and from the citizens they purport to serve. According to Professor Young, “the idea is to start the ball rolling for a more systematic empirical analysis of the backgrounds of individuals that lead large international organizations, broadly construed. How many of them are women? Where did they go to school? What are their nationalities? How is this all changing over time?” The new dataset will seed new analyses of elites and potentially public-elite gaps in perspectives on human security problems.
Two other major datasets out of conflict zones were collected by research teams associated with the Lab this year: one on citizen attitudes toward Ukraine’s travel restrictions on civilian men, and the Afghan Voices Dataset, a collection of 26,000 random survey responses out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan exploring the determinants of citizen attitudes toward international human rights and gender equality.
In each case, Lab researchers convened communities of stakeholders, civilian protection advocates and citizens in both countries to gauge concerns and develop problem-focused research designs, and focused on communicating early results from the analyses to the public and to practitioners through briefings, invited talks, op-eds, briefing notes and an interactive website - while cranking out scientific papers to top journals like PLOS One, Human Rights Quaterly and the Journal of Global Security Studies.
“It often takes years for scientific papers to be published,” Carpenter said. “We provide toplines early to stakeholders to inform practice. And we aim to write and publicize scientific research that can be helpful and actionable to civilian communities - whether those convincing the Taliban to put girls in school, or those affected by nuclear testing trying to convince states to sign the nuclear ban treaty.”
The Lab works closely with undergraduate and graduate students, drawing them into projects and providing small grants for their own research. Several students and alums joined Professor Carpenter this year to present research at the US State Department and United Nations; others have co-authored papers with Carpenter, Professors Bernhard Leidner and Kevin Young; or published their own work seeded by Lab projects. Numerous other students
Camryn Hughes, who graduated from UMass in 2023 but continues to collaborate with the Lab on the Afghanistan and nuclear projects and recently joined the Lab’s delegation to the United Nations said, “Working in the Lab with Dr. Carpenter built my academic and professional confidence in a way few other experiences have. It’s was easily one of my favorite parts of my undergraduate experience.”
This coming year, the Lab is also expanding its repertoire of consulting activities with practitioners, offering data-informed science reviews of human security problems, and bespoke analyses of current datasets. The Human Security Lab team looks forward to an exciting new year of increased engagement across diverse communities at UMass and beyond, and to continuing to use scientific tools to amplify marginalized perspectives into global debates.