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title: Meeting with Gary Uzonyi

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# Gary Uzonyi, @TSPMI

## :calendar: December 15, 2023 -- 15:00

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Project idea
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My research has taken a quantitative approach to analyzing the onset, duration, and termination of mass atrocities, such as genocide and politicide. Quantitative scholarship has come to dominate both the international relations scholarship on these processes and much of the work of atrocities prediction by government and non-governmental agencies alike. However, this approach relies on blunt data at the country and conflict level to explain these processes. It has external validity in capturing broad patterns across these dimensions. It suffers, though, from relying on variables that are often time-invariant and slow moving and an inability to capture fine grain processes that help explain key junctures in these processes. For this reason, scholarship in this field often comes to mixed or inconclusive conclusions on the causes and consequences of key factors in each stage of these atrocities and the efforts employed to prevent or halt them. Alternatively, qualitative scholarship has provided rich insights with high internal validity into the specifics of the genocidal process of particular conflisimcts. The tradeoff in this granular approach, though, is that it is difficult to apply the lessons learned across time and space because data does not exist to compare these specifics across large numbers of cases. My proposal is to consolidate the research on mass atrocities in both the quantitative and qualitative scholarship by using primary and secondary sources to collect fine grain data at the micro, meso, and macro levels of the conflict process to quantitatively analyze (1) why some conflicts devolve into mass atrocity, (2) the duration of those atrocities, (3) why atrocities end, and (4) what role the international community has in influencing both the onset and conclusion of these atrocities. These data will capture important aspects of the perpetrator, target, conflict, geography, population, country, and international system. This project will thus be able to connect cutting edge quantitative analysis with the type of data such investigation has long lacked. It will thus be able to unify better the research produced across the two venerable traditions of genocide and mass atrocity scholarship—quantitative and qualitative—that often struggle to engage with one another.   

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About Gary
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Gary Uzonyi received his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan in 2013. He is currently an associate professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s Department of Political Science. His research focuses on civil war, genocide, and the international community’s responses to these forms of political violence. His work has produced 2 books, 26 peer-reviewed articles (22 in Q1 journals) and has been grant funded. This research can be found in outlets such as International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Journal of Peace Research, among others.

