PeaceHub: Global Mediation Database

This VIP is an exciting opportunity for students to get involved with the ‘Global Fragmentation and Conflict Management’ project funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

This project is led by Dr Peter and involves post-doctoral researchers and doctoral students at St Andrews already, as well as collaborators at the University of Edinburgh. One of the big outputs of the project – and where VIP students will make an intervention - is a new Mediation Event and Negotiators Database (MEND).

The MEND dataset comprehensively covers broader peacemaking efforts within armed conflicts, tracking all mediation and mediation-related events involving external third-party actors. It captures mediation as part of formal peace initiatives and mediation attempts running in support or in parallel to these. The dataset facilitates a nuanced understanding of the roles various actors play in brokering agreements and enables the identification of unsuccessful or spoiler mediation attempts that may still have influenced the ongoing conflict management. In an era marked by global fragmentation, this data plays a crucial role in providing insights into when, how, and why actors engage in mediation activities, allowing for the mapping of network dynamics between international and local actors, and identification of the mediation conditions conducive to the eventual signing of peace agreements.

This VIP will allow students to work on an important resource for researchers and practitioners with a focus on peace and conflict resolution, giving them a hands-on experience of working with a dataset and engaging in policy-focused research. It will also allow students to contribute to the database in real terms, allowing the team to grow this important resource even further.