About CICAM

CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT - ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT (CICAM)

INTRODUCTION
The Centre for International Conflict - Analysis & Management (CICAM) is an academic research and educational institute based at Radboud University in NIjmegen, the Netherlands. Founded in 1965 and formerly known as the Peace Research Centre, CICAM is part of the Political Science Department in the Nijmegen School of Management. The institute is home to political scientists, histrians and sociologists and has a cross-disciplinary approach. 
Its main tasks are conducting scientific research and offering education on peace and security issues as well as on war and conflict.
Furthermore, CICAM focuses on societal service, information and documentation. CICAM has has its own documentation centre, which provides information about war and peace issues.

RESEARCH
CICAM research specializes in the analysis of contemporary violent conflicts and initiatives to promote and foster peace. CICAM researchers study these phenomena from the perspective of actors in conflict-affected countries themselves, while remaining cognisant of the embeddedness of local dynamics in national, international and transnational developments.

In particular, research produced by CICAM scholars is characterised by:

  • In-depth, qualitative fieldwork in conflict-affected states (in combination with other methodological approaches)
  • Critical analyses of dominant frameworks, discourses, and approaches to conflict analysis, peacebuilding and development
  • The interest in the connections and interactions between ‘local’ and ‘global’ actors and the need to continually problematize these terms

Specific themes that are frequently covered in CICAM research include:

  • Local processes of state formation and diverse efforts at legitimizing public authority, involving state actors, civil society groups, local and customary institutions, warlords and international organisations
  • The relationship between conflict and development, including the roles played by foreign aid and investment in producing peace and/or conflict
  • The role of civil society and social movements in conflict, peace and development
  • Discourses and practices of peacebuilding
  • Everyday practice of state-building, governance and security in border areas

Projects in which CICAM researchers are involved include:

  • 'Donor-Government Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa' (funded by a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant from the European Commission’s Seventh Programme Framework).
  • 'Guerre et Politique' (funded by the City of Paris)
  • 'Grounding Land Governance - Land conflicts, local governance & decentralization in Uganda, Burundi & South Sudan' (Funded by NWO WOTRO Integrated Programme, hosted by the African Studies Centre, Leiden)
  • 'Competing Hegemonies: Foreign-dominated processes of development in post-conflict Cambodia' (Funded by NWO WOTRO Integrated Programme, with University of Amsterdam, Free University Amsterdam, and Royal University of Phnom Penh Cambodia).
  • 'Alternatives to state-sponsored security in Areas of Extremely Limited Statehood: South Sudan and the Central African Republic' (Funded by the German DFG SFB700 programme ‘Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood’ of the Free University Berlin with the GIGA Institute of African Affairs)

EDUCATION
CICAM offers education at the bachelor and master level on topics realted to the dynamics of war, peace and security and theire linkages with military interventions, development aid and civil society organizations intervening in conflict-affected areas.
CICAM offers bachelor electives in both English and Dutch. The courses offered in English are:

  • Conflict and governance in Africa (bachelor, 6 ECTS) (this course is cancelled)
  • Natural resources, conflict and governance (bachelor, 6 ECTS)
  • War and statebuilding in Afghanistan (bachelor, 6 ECTS)

In collaboration with the Department of Human Geography, CICAM runs a master programme entitled Conflicts, Territories and Identities (CTI) and CICAM participates in the Political Science master programme Conflict, Power and Politics (CoPoPo). These one-year master's tracks provide students with cutting-edge training in political science and geographical approaches to the study of conflict, peace, borders and development. CICAM offers the following courses in above mentioned master programmes:

  • Conflicting theories (master, 6 ECTS, only for CTI and CoPoPo students)
  • Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding (master, 6 ECTS, only for CTI and CoPoPo students)
  • Conflict, aid and development (master elective, 6 ECTS) (this course is cancelled)

Please note that only CTI and CoPoPo master students can attend above mentioned master courses, with the exception of the elective Conflict, Aid and Development which is accessible to all graduate students with 24 credits in conflict or development related courses.

Read more about the courses in the CICAM Study Guide 2023-2024 (pdf, 235 kB) (with a description of some courses in English). More details about the master's programme can be found here.

PUBLIC OUTREACH
In its nearly fifty years of existence CICAM has built partnerhips with a range of organizations inside and outside the Netherlands. One example of such collaboration is the Extraordinary Pax Christi Chair Normative and Policy Dilemmas of Multilateral Peace Operations, which was founded in 1998. Since 2009, professor Désirée Verweij has held this chair. The chair was previously occuped by professor Ann Pauwels.

Members of the CICAM staff regularly contribute research and policy advice to organizations such as NGO's, think tanks and the Ministery of Foreign Affairs. CICAM staff members are regularly invited to provide lecturers at home and abroad, for both academic and non-scientific audiences and often appear in national and international media to provide expertise on the dynamics of national and international security, peace and security.


security council

Centre for International Conflict - Analysis & Management (CICAM)
Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

Visiting address
Elinor Ostrom building
Nijmegen

Postal address
P.O. Box 9108
6500 HK Nijmegen
The Netherlands

Telephone: +31 24 3615687
E-mail: cicam@fm.ru.nl

Internet:
www.ru.nl/cicam

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