The conflict landscape is becoming increasingly fragmented and diverse, with new forms of conflict emerging that defy traditional assumptions that a peace process can be negotiated between a state and a single dominant state actor.

This work develops the ‘fragment state’ analysis to help us understand conflict and peace dynamics, and where and how best to support agency for peacebuilding, through a series of connected academic and practice-based inquiries.

• How can we methodically understand the fragment state and the impact of interventions within it?
• How can political power and political logics be understood in the fragment state?
• Can we map the different actors, and the projects of cooperation and opposition in which are engaged?
• What are the ways in which different actors understand themselves to have projects of positive change, and agency to work towards that change?
• How is the ‘fragment state’ financed and how do resource flows and natural resource management look like?
• What are the possibilities cooperation and brokerage for the different visions of the conflict and possibilities for the future of local, national, and international actors?