Background

Steve Pickering has taught International Relations at the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University, and the Department of Government, University of Essex.

Research

Steve's research uses geographic information systems (GIS) to look at a variety of social phenomena. Current projects include:

• The relationship between climate change an riots/ protests in Africa: collaborative research with Ismene Gizelis (Essex) and Henrik Urdal (PRIO).
• Municipality mergers and the distribution of public goods in Japan: collaborative research with Seiki Tanaka (Syracuse) and Kyohei Yamada (Yale).
• Rugged terrain and war - how does terrain relate to conflict? This research argues that it is a mistake to use the word "mountain" in conflict. research, as the term is surprisingly loaded. Additionally, the majority of current research uses the state as its unit of analysis. As such, this research a) develops a new method for quantifying the ruggedness of terrain, with a new linear scale, thus breaking the mountain dichotomy; b) disaggregates from the state. In so doing, it finds that territorial conflicts are strongly related to the ruggedness of terrain.
• Map and war - maps also present numerous issues which must be addressed by conflict researchers. As part of a wider research project, Steve has created digital maps for every state and every year between 1946 - 2004.
• Borders and war - the nature of borders is fascinating, yet with the spread of Westphalia (facilitated, in part by the spread of the Westphalian map), an impression has been created that all political borders are equal. This is far from the case. Numerous metaphysical understandings of borders exist, all of which have real-world, political analogues.
• Distance and war - the relationship between proximity and conflict has been long understood, but the exact nature has been surprisingly elusive. This was in part due to the lack of a complete minimum interstate distance dataset. Accordingly, a complete minimum distance dataset was created for all states, reflecting changes to state boundaries between 1946 and 2010. Additionally, several new measures of distance were included in the dataset, including minimum-capital and average distance, which give new insights into the relationship between distance and conflict.

Publications

• Gleditsch, K. S. and Pickering, S. (2013). 'Wars are becoming less frequent: a response to Harrison and Wolf.' Economic History Review. Accepted for publication.
• Pickering, S. (2012). 'Proximity, maps and conflict: new measures, new maps and new findings.' Conflict Management and Peace Science. Vol. 29, No. 4.
• Pickering, S. (2012). 'The terrain of war: how using the word "mountain" biases conflict research.' In Chatterji, M. (ed.), Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development Volume 19. Bingley, UK: Emerald.
• Pickering, S. (2011). 'Determinism in the mountains: the ongoing belief in the bellicosity of 'mountain people'.' The Economics of Peace and Security Journal. Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 21--25.
• Geyer, R. and Pickering, S. (2011). 'Applying the tools of complexity to the international realm: from fitness landscapes to complexity cascades.' Cambridge Review of International Affairs. Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 5--26.

More information

More information is available at stevepickering.net.