As a center for applied research, the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice focuses on the pursuit of research that can be practically applied in ways that will advance a more peaceful and just world. Within the Kroc IPJ, the Violence, Inequality and Power (VIP) Lab maintains this focus, honing in on the multifaceted ways in which power, as manifested through inequalities, reinforces cycles of violence and shapes the narratives used to describe violence.
As a Lab, we aim to test and iterate ideas, particularly ideas that have the potential to shift conversations from ones that may be stuck in the ruts of assumed knowledge, to forge new tracks in the pursuit of learning to prevent violence.
Essential to the VIP Lab’s success are partnerships with scholars, activists, practitioners and others from various disciplines and backgrounds. Our partnerships help us push boundaries, test assumptions and experiment with new or newly applied ideas. In 2024 we’ve grown these partnerships by bringing in a class of Fellows - six non-residential and two residential.
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The 2024 Violence, Inequality and Power Lab Fellows
VIP Lab Fellows are pursuing research in places as diverse as Nigeria, Colombia, and the United States, working across issues that include global migration, technology and identity, and indigenous women’s rights. We believe ideas are made stronger through connections across disciplines. While their context and areas of focus may differ, Fellows share the throughline of analyzing power and its relationship to violence. By leaning into diverse perspectives and challenging norms, the VIP Lab deepens its exploration of these issues, flowing between theory and practice with greater intentionality.
Regardless of background, Fellows retain a focus on audience and purpose. How is research intended to be used? By whom? What will this mean for peace, violence, and justice? How can we leverage the individual work of the Fellows with the collective output to shift conversations regarding knowledge production, gatekeeping and standards of excellence?
To glean insights into these questions and more, VIP Lab Residential Fellow Biko Koenig shares his experience in the fellowship thus far. Biko is grounded in the more traditional, academic universe as a Professor of Government and Public Policy at Franklin & Marshall college in Lancaster, PA. His work analyzing trajectories of political extremism in the US connects directly to narratives of power, to how people are mobilized, including around a sense of lost power and status, how this relates to real and perceived inequality, and what this means for a future that is either more or less politically violent. Biko actively leans into conversation with others who come to knowledge production in less traditional ways and/or who are studying power, inequality and violence through a different lens.
Biko Koenig: A VIP Lab Fellow's Perspective
As a researcher and an academic, I have been privileged to have held several year-long, residential fellowships to advance my work. I’ve had fellowships at the Graduate Institute of Design, Ethnography, and Social Thought and the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. In the scholarly world, such fellowships follow a somewhat standard format with the universal element being the time and space to research and write, with accompanying resources allowing scholars to take time away from their teaching and service responsibilities as professors. It is hard to overstate the importance of these kinds of experiences, and some of my best work has been the product of the space, time, and community they provide.
In some ways my time here as a Residential Fellow of the VIP Lab has offered a similar opportunity to step away from my other responsibilities and dedicate long-term time to research, think, and write. But there has been a crucial difference in this experience, one that has pushed my work in new and important ways and that has already made a lasting impact on how I think about the value and purpose of research. In the scholarly world, our standards trend towards rigorous data analyses and quality publication venues with generally limited concern for the impact of a project outside of academic engagement. But at the VIP Lab, there is a relentless focus on action-oriented, practitioner-focused projects. How will this research make a direct and meaningful impact to build a more just world? How can this project be designed to land firmly in the hands of in-the-weeds practitioners who will put it directly into practice? While this may seem like a subtle difference, it has been a paradigm shift in the way that I conceive of not only my own work, but how I fit into the wider struggle for a more just world.
I am privileged to once again be surrounded by brilliant researchers asking important questions. But the environment as a VIP Lab Fellow is laser-focused on implementation and positive social change. Through the California Threats and Harassment Initiative (CATHI), which investigates aggressive actions against local elected officials, the research is both empirically sound and analytically compelling. But it is the dogged focus on implementation that makes it sing. In a political ecosystem characterized by shockingly high incidents of threats and harassment, and where female officials often see higher rates of this abuse, the VIP Lab counsels concrete and empirically rich solutions: greater transparency, greater reporting, and deeper engagement with local communities about these issues.
I had the opportunity to witness this firsthand when I attended a community meeting where CATHI results were shared with members of the San Diego community. Unlike a typical academic presentation that simply presents findings and answers questions, this experience was designed to be engaging and participatory. After an overview of the findings, our table was given the task of discussing which policy solutions the community members were most curious about or found most effective. The individuals at our table brought a keen analysis to the conversation, drawing from their own experiences attending school board meetings and supporting the local library. They were particularly interested in methods to promote citizen engagement and responsibility from the grassroots level, seeing this as the most effective approach to strengthening democratic resilience and combating threats and harassment.
I was deeply impressed both by the high level of engagement among community members and by how the VIP Lab integrated these insights into the research. This approach ensures that the experiences of those directly affected are incorporated into actionable policy adjustments. As an academic, I confess to reflecting on the policy impact only at the end of my work, and I have been both humbled and inspired by the approach of the VIP Lab.
Drawing on my experiences studying conservative social movements, my project at the VIP Lab seeks to explore rising levels of participation in extremist groups in the United States. I am particularly interested in the processes and mechanisms by which everyday Americans, notably young men, become involved in groups that advocate political violence and anti-democratic practices. I come to this project as a social movement scholar, interested in (sometimes overly academic) themes of grievance mobilization, collective identity, and political narrative. In a different context, I would likely approach these questions with the sensibility of an academic, gathering new evidence to advance our shared empirical and theoretical knowledge about how violence, inequality, and power come together in this context. However, my time spent at the VIP Lab has pushed the project in crucial ways, encouraging me to ask more action-oriented questions about outreach tactics, intervention points, and the role of civil society in cultivating a more peaceful broader society.
How does the inequality throughout our society fuel the grievances that lead people to turn toward violent activity? How does a sense of powerlessness in the face of social crisis push people to find extremist rhetoric and the power of violent action compelling and worthwhile? What can we, in organizations, through our government, and as individuals, do to build interventions to these grievances and crises that shape anti-democratic politics and cultivate violent behavior? These are big questions indeed, but ones that must be asked in our increasingly uncertain times and that are the direct result of this project’s incubation at the VIP Lab.
