This course combines theoretical, empirical, and conceptual work on conflict and peacebuilding with experiences and reflections from particular cases. The course integrates research on political violence, civil war onset, armed group mobilization, rebel governance, and civilian agency. It further explores international responses to conflict, engaging literatures on statebuilding, colonization, and liberal peace. While the course is primarily empirical in focus, it situates experiences of violence, conflict and peace within a broader historical trajectory, considering relationships between global structures of power and the microdynamics of conflict.