Violence is an enduring global challenge: it can occur in the context of interpersonal relationships, as well as interstate and intercommunal conflict. The synchronous focus on the global and the social in international political sociology might naturally transcend some paradigmatic divisions over what constitutes violence and at which level of analysis it might be studied.

The study of violence is core to the study of International Relations (IR), however, there has been little analysis of the complex concept of violence and how it functions at the intersection of IR, sociology, and politics as well as other disciplines represented by journalism and health.

The entry point, then, is to consider whether working across academic disciplines can better account for this complexity. In order to do this, the researchers, led by VISION Co-Investigator Alexandria Innes, ask not simply what violence is, but how violence comes to be known at all.

Andri and colleagues Koen Slootmaeckers, Elizabeth Cook (VISION), Olumide Adisa (VISION), Lindsey Blumell, Gene Feder (VISION), Jana Kriechbaum and Laura Sjoberg, examine the conditions that shape how violence becomes intelligible within and across disciplines, and how these conditions are shaped by power that is operational in academic disciplines, and in the world. Violence in the world, whilst present in our discussions as a referent, is not our main focus; rather, the relationship between violence in the world and violence in the academy emerged as the central problematic shaping our discussion.

This collective discussion, follows from a series of roundtables, which situated violence as a “boundary object”: objects that are “plastic” enough to exist across different disciplines and languages, but “robust” enough to maintain a common identity. The roundtables were built around three themes, replicated below, to interrogate, test, and push the boundaries of plasticity and robustness on the concept of violence across disciplines. The conversation that emerged is presented in this collective discussion as a conversation, with representation of divergent positions and the thought processes they inspired.