The Understanding Violent Conflict program is a series of research collaborations with institutions in Africa and the Middle East, Europe, and Asia intended to expand scholarship on violent conflict around the world.

The UVC has partnered with the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a host of other partners on this UK Department for International Development (DFID) funded research consortium.

The Politics of Return research project, is a three-year LSE project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council from 2017-2019 on the dynamics of ‘return and reintegration’ in the central and eastern African countries of Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and South Sudan through an ethnography of return and social repair in order to provide practical and policy support to international and national projects and programs aimed at facilitating the return of refugees and the displaced to their ‘homes’.

Since 2017, the UVC has partnered with the Centre for Public Authority and International Development (CPAID) at the LSE, on a research collaboration exploring how public authority is understood, experienced, and perceived by the particularly vulnerable and marginalized populations. Endowed with funding of £5 million from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), CPAID brings together world-leading researchers on Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic. Disciplinary backgrounds range from anthropology, economics and development studies to international relations and political science. Building on the knowledge, networks, and connections of its members, CPAID aims to make a substantial impact by engaging meaningfully with stakeholders in the researched countries, forging closer links between academic research and policy-making, and providing an evidence base for more effective policies to promote inclusive growth and social change.