Computational Methods in Peace Research in Africa

Research methods are broadly classified as either qualitative or quantitative, involving inductive and deductive approaches to research. However, the complexity of the factors and conditions that peace research grapples with demands the integration of generative methods at both the practical and theoretical levels. This integration requires a simulated environment to test the ideas and hypotheses that cannot be done practically in order to further aid our understanding of the tendencies in the social structure and the processes of interactions among the various conflict agents that shape and motivate conflict and initiate violence. This paper advocates that, with peace research being multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary involving spatial and temporal scales, computational methods present a natural environment for the interdisciplinary study of its variables of interest through laboratory and clinical behavioral research via the creation of artificial societies. They also provide a new way of empirical peace research by which social phenomena can be generated qualitatively. The paper further argues that the integration of the physical and theoretical in a clinical laboratory environment through the use of generative computational methods should enhance a much better exchange of knowledge and ideas between decision-makers, field practitioners, and the research community.