Thursday seminar: BIFD Stathis Kalyvas + BIFD Frank Mols

Violent Political Conflict

by Stathis Kalyvas

We study and speak of different forms of political violence, from torture to ethnic conflict, from war to genocide, from crimes against humanity to terrorism, using a profusion of “natural categories” that have emerged organically, are politically charged, and ultimately impede our understanding of this deplorable yet universal form of collective human behavior. I propose, present, and discuss a new way to rationalize this field of political activity and to minimize our categories. I argue that this conceptual move allows us to analyze, but importantly also to describe, the complex landscape of political violence more effectively.

Bio

Stathis N. Kalyvas is Gladstone Professor of Government and fellow of All Souls College at Oxford. He was, until 2018, the Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science at Yale University, where he founded and directed the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence and co-directed the Hellenic Studies Program. In 2019 he founded the T. E. Lawrence Program on Conflict and Violence at All Souls College. He is the author, among others, of The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Cornell University Press, 1996) and The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2006). His work has received multiple awards and he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and the British Academy in 2020. Since December 2023 he also serves as Chairman of the Board of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center.

Collective Amnesia in Political Science Research

by Franks Mols

Bio

Frank Mols is Senior Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland, Australia. His research interests include elections, voting, populist radical right parties, leadership, political communication, political behaviour and evidence-based policy.
Frank’s research has been published in leading international journals, including Leadership Quarterly, European Journal of Political Research, Political Psychology, Public Administration, West European Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, Evidence and Policy, China Quarterly, Journal of Social Issues, Frontiers in Communication, Australian Journal of Political Science, and the Australian Journal of Public Administration.
His 2017 book The Wealth Paradox (co-authored with Jolanda Jetten and published by Cambridge University Press) has attracted international attention and praise for having debunked pervasive myths about populist parties and their voter base.