Created as a public foundation with full academic freedom by the State of Hesse, PRIF is the largest peace research institute in Germany. “PRIF´s work is directed towards identifying the causes of violent international and internal conflicts, carrying out research into the conditions necessary for peace, understood as a process of decreasing violence and increasing justice, and spreading the concepts of peace.” It places a regional focus on the Balkans, the Middle East, and Asia. Each research department engages in a variety of projects, all of which publish reports downloadable from the website.

Programs:

• International Security – Studies “the classic field of inter­national security policy: States seek security, their own, that of their citizens, and of political, economic, and environ­mental relation­ships.”
• International Institutions – Concentrates “on the develop­ment, design, impact, possible change and dis­inte­gration of the inter­national institutions that are charged with facilitating and preserving peace.”
• Transnational Politics – Focuses on “the trans­national dimension of conflict and peace, focusing on activities of trans­national actors and how trans­national phenomena (e.g. migration flows, environmental destruction and terrorism) impact peace and security.”
• Intrastate Conflict – Concerned “with the relation­ship between the orga­nization and trans­formation of political rule, on the one hand, and the violent escalation or peace­ful re­so­lution of intra­state conflicts, on the other.”
• Glocal Junctions – Examines “peace and conflict at the intra­state level. Its particular concern is with the relation­ship between the orga­nization and trans­formation of political rule, on the one hand, and the violent escalation or peace­ful re­so­lution of intra­state conflicts, on the other.”
• Public International Law – Analy­zes ‘the causes, the course and the conse­quences of inter­national and intra­state conflicts and uses this basis to develop approa­ches for dealing with such conflicts.”
• Radicalization – Investigates “the causes and dynamics of radicalization processes as well as their effects on societies.”

Publications:

• An extensive online library of 5000+ studies, reports, spotlights, working papers etc.
• Taking Intervention Politics Seriously (2020, 18p) – Investigate how the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) is contested and negotiated in practice. Yet little knowledge exists on the politics African regional interventions provoke in the societies affected by such interventions.
• The Spatial Dimension of Insurgent-Civilian Relations: Routinised Insurgent Space (2019, 36p) –  Develops the concept of Routinised Insurgent Space (RIS) as a means to sys­temati­cally assess the way that move­ments spatially order inter­actions with existing and potential supporters.