Evolutionary Approaches to Peace Science Workshop

(L to R:) Venessa Lefler, Gary Goertz, Rengyee Lee, Ryan Welch, Kelly Kadera, Allyn Milojevich, Rebecca Best, Joslyn Barnhart, Yuri Zhukov, Matt Zefferman

Topic: Evolutionary Approaches to Peace Science Workshop

Meeting date: October 24, 2013

Location: NIMBioS at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Organizers:
Joslyn Barnhart, Wesleyan Univ.
Matthew Zefferman, NIMBioS

Objectives: In conjunction with The Peace Science Society Annual Conference, NIMBioS hosted a one-day workshop on "Evolutionary Approaches to Peace Science."  Peace science is an interdisciplinary field whose main purpose is the study and prevention of human conflict, especially international conflict. This workshop will take a broad view of "evolutionary approaches."  The unifying thread is that of "selection,"  which requires consideration of variation in entities (e.g., norms, preferences, policies, institutions) and selective retention or transmission of these entities through time. Existing evolutionary approaches to peace science have been scattered and covered on a wide range of evolutionary processes at a wide range of physical and temporal scales. However, it is likely that these different processes happen simultaneously and have interesting interactions.

Some examples of existing approaches in peace science are:

1. Policy learning and diffusion of successful policies
2. Normative and ideational change through cultural selection
3. Competition and selection on economic and political institutions
4. Computational and mathematical models of international conflict/cooperation

This workshop was intended to further discussion of how to integrate these approaches into a useful whole, with a focus on mathematical and computational modeling and empirical methods.

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From 2008 until early 2021, NIMBioS was supported by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award #DBI-1300426, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.