Jason Miklian
I am a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) at the University of Oslo. My primary topic of study is of the role of businesses as peacebuilders and agents of sustainable development in fragile states. Specifically, I research corporate engagement within the 'Business for Peace' paradigm and for UN Sustainable Development Goal #16. Primary countries of research are Colombia, Myanmar, and India with case work in the DRC, Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Philippines in support, among others.
I am a member of several expert groups and advisory boards on the above topics, and have written for or been cited in an expert capacity by the New York Times, BBC, The Economist, Agence France-Presse, Guardian (UK), Washington Post, Foreign Policy, France 24, NRK (Norway), The Hindu (India) and National Public Radio among various media outlets. I can be reached at jason.miklian@sum.uio.no.
Phone: 004746894451
Address: Sandakerveien 130
Oslo, Norway
I am a member of several expert groups and advisory boards on the above topics, and have written for or been cited in an expert capacity by the New York Times, BBC, The Economist, Agence France-Presse, Guardian (UK), Washington Post, Foreign Policy, France 24, NRK (Norway), The Hindu (India) and National Public Radio among various media outlets. I can be reached at jason.miklian@sum.uio.no.
Phone: 004746894451
Address: Sandakerveien 130
Oslo, Norway
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Articles by Jason Miklian
leading indicator or even predictor of future conflict events. Literature
establishes that sentiment can be central to conflict escalation processes,
and that news media may capture and reflect peaceful or conflictual
sentiment within a given society. Moreover, analysis through machine
learning and natural language processing techniques increasingly allow
us to gather and process sentiment data at unprecedented scale, depth,
and accuracy. We draw on GDELT’s global sample of more than five
billion media articles to test the relationship between media reported
sentiment and conflict events, utilizing the PRIO-GRID data structure at
daily and monthly intervals. We find that more conflictual sentiment is
significantly associated with spatially and temporally proximate future
conflict events as measured by the ACLED, SCAD and UCDP-GED
datasets. We propose that conflict sentiment can help us analyze conflict
escalation processes more precisely by measuring emotional intensity
and direction through media sentiment analysis, delivering new value for peace and conflict research
most acute societal and political weaknesses of countries around the world.
But while COVID-19 may be pulling back our veneers of societal normalcy and stability, it did not create the weaknesses that it is exposing. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, asymmetric relations between local and global power structures were on the rise. These fractures included deepening divides between key North and South actors as governments, businesses and citizens in the North attach renewed importance to overcoming domestic challenges at the expense of their global consequences (Bhambra, 2017), for example in prioritizing cheap fuel over climate action. But they also included new divides between North and North states that crystallized when leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom questioned fundamental alliances that were created at the end of the Second World War, finding populist ‘homegrown solutions’ to be more attractive. And new constellations of cooperation between South and South countries have emerged as they seek to make a greater stamp on global policy and clarifying their own internationalist trajectories in global leadership vacuums. In short, COVID-19 is not a catalyst for societal change, but an accelerant.
SSRN Working Paper February 2017
WORKING PAPER DRAFT, ISA 2017 - PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION
In this course, held at the Research School on Peace and Conflict by the Peace Research Institute Oslo, we will unpack the relationships between business, conflict and liberal peace politics that led to the B4P and broader business-peace frameworks, and collaboratively explore how businesses see their new role as peacebuilders and peacemakers, particularly within the international community's multi-billion dollar development agenda in fragile and conflict-affected states.
The course is structured as follows: After a brief introductory session to discuss the agenda and learn course participants’ backgrounds and motivations, we will hold two 3-hour sessions per day for the three-day course period, each designed to address a different thematic challenge of business and peace scholarship and practice. Sessions are designed to be collaborative and discussion-oriented, with the readings and discussion questions to be used as a springboard for questions of interest by participants. At the end of each day we will hold a brief concluding wrap-up session to tackle big picture questions and distill key lessons from the day’s discussion.
Additional information and course signup is available at: http://www.peaceconflictresearch.org/Courses/Course/?x=1107
(forthcoming in Business, Peace and Sustainable Development, 2017)
leading indicator or even predictor of future conflict events. Literature
establishes that sentiment can be central to conflict escalation processes,
and that news media may capture and reflect peaceful or conflictual
sentiment within a given society. Moreover, analysis through machine
learning and natural language processing techniques increasingly allow
us to gather and process sentiment data at unprecedented scale, depth,
and accuracy. We draw on GDELT’s global sample of more than five
billion media articles to test the relationship between media reported
sentiment and conflict events, utilizing the PRIO-GRID data structure at
daily and monthly intervals. We find that more conflictual sentiment is
significantly associated with spatially and temporally proximate future
conflict events as measured by the ACLED, SCAD and UCDP-GED
datasets. We propose that conflict sentiment can help us analyze conflict
escalation processes more precisely by measuring emotional intensity
and direction through media sentiment analysis, delivering new value for peace and conflict research
most acute societal and political weaknesses of countries around the world.
But while COVID-19 may be pulling back our veneers of societal normalcy and stability, it did not create the weaknesses that it is exposing. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, asymmetric relations between local and global power structures were on the rise. These fractures included deepening divides between key North and South actors as governments, businesses and citizens in the North attach renewed importance to overcoming domestic challenges at the expense of their global consequences (Bhambra, 2017), for example in prioritizing cheap fuel over climate action. But they also included new divides between North and North states that crystallized when leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom questioned fundamental alliances that were created at the end of the Second World War, finding populist ‘homegrown solutions’ to be more attractive. And new constellations of cooperation between South and South countries have emerged as they seek to make a greater stamp on global policy and clarifying their own internationalist trajectories in global leadership vacuums. In short, COVID-19 is not a catalyst for societal change, but an accelerant.
SSRN Working Paper February 2017
WORKING PAPER DRAFT, ISA 2017 - PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION
In this course, held at the Research School on Peace and Conflict by the Peace Research Institute Oslo, we will unpack the relationships between business, conflict and liberal peace politics that led to the B4P and broader business-peace frameworks, and collaboratively explore how businesses see their new role as peacebuilders and peacemakers, particularly within the international community's multi-billion dollar development agenda in fragile and conflict-affected states.
The course is structured as follows: After a brief introductory session to discuss the agenda and learn course participants’ backgrounds and motivations, we will hold two 3-hour sessions per day for the three-day course period, each designed to address a different thematic challenge of business and peace scholarship and practice. Sessions are designed to be collaborative and discussion-oriented, with the readings and discussion questions to be used as a springboard for questions of interest by participants. At the end of each day we will hold a brief concluding wrap-up session to tackle big picture questions and distill key lessons from the day’s discussion.
Additional information and course signup is available at: http://www.peaceconflictresearch.org/Courses/Course/?x=1107
(forthcoming in Business, Peace and Sustainable Development, 2017)
polycrisis? This work blends historical lessons, firsthand accounts, and
ethical perspectives on crisis to fill a key gap in our understanding of
effective, ethical leadership through settings of crisis, conflict and/or
fragility. Pulling from historical events and contemporary research, this
Element looks past individual crises and explores a world of
overlapping, permanent crises, or “polycrisis.” It contrasts traditional
leadership responses with values of community and authenticity,
emphasizing the necessity of ethical and servant leadership when
conventional business strategies fail. This work offers insights for
anyone interested in understanding and navigating the complex
landscape of crisis and strategizes enduring leadership for constant
crises.
Drawing on extensive research within India, this book looks at some of the ‘hidden risks’ that India faces, exploring how a broadened scope of what constitutes ‘risk’ itself holds value for Indian security studies practitioners and policymakers. It highlights several human security risks facing India, including the inability of the world’s largest democracy to deal effectively with widespread poverty and health issues, resource depletion and environmental mismanagement, pervasive corruption and institutionalized crime, communal violence, a protracted Maoist insurgency, and deadlocked peace processes in the Northeast among others. The book extracts common themes from these seemingly disparate problems, discussing what underlying failures allow them to persist and why policymakers heavily securitize some political issues while ignoring others.
Providing an understanding of how several lesser-studied risks can pose potential or actual threats to Indian society and its ‘emerging power’ growth narrative, this book is a useful contribution to South Asian Studies, International Security Studies and Global Politics.
In this presentation I illustrate how new global shifts can help us decipher the future of land and conflict, exploring 3 theoretical propositions for understanding the relationship between resource acquisition, displacement, and the potential for violent conflict today
best described as ‘liberal’, ‘illiberal’, or ‘hybrid’, and whether there is an inherently ‘Indian’ mode of peacebuilding at all. We aim to contribute to the critical rethinking of (il)liberal peacebuilding and hybrid peace governance, illustrating not only that peacebuilding activities can be employed internally in addition to their traditional use of external actors trying to fix ‘failed’ states, but that Indian debates on conflict management and resolution already employ the rhetoric (if not the actions) of liberal peacebuilding to justify interventions of varied degrees of liberality across the country through developmental security lenses.