Prof. Roger Petersen

Petersen's earlier work (Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe) concentrated on violent networks. A second strand of research studied motivations and emotions behind ethnic violence and culminated in Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe. Petersen's more recent major research, culminating in a book entitled Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict, again deals with emotions but with a different focus. Here, the goal is to understand how political entrepreneurs strategically use group emotions within the contours and constraints of conflict. Most recently, Petersen has begun another major set of research working with practitioners returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The primary goal is to identify which social science theories apply to 21st Century insurgency. This collaboration involved in a conference held in April 2010 at MIT (Workshop on Iraq and Afghanistan: Theory and Practice).