Professor Thomas Chadefaux

• Thomas Chadefaux, News and War, 1.0, Journal of Peace Research, 2014Dataset, 2014, URL
• Data Science, Amsterdam, IOS Press, [eds.], -2018Editorial Board
• Thomas Chadefaux, 'ACCESS', 2015, -Map, GIS map, 2015
• Thomas Chadefaux, Market Anticipations of Conflict Onset, UCD, Dublin, 2016Invited Talk, 2016
• Spaiser, Viktoria, Thomas Chadefaux, Karsten Donnay and Dirk Helbing., Communication power struggles on social media: A case study of the 2011-12 Russian protests, Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 2017, p1 - 47Journal Article, 2017, URL
• Thomas Chadefaux, Market Anticipations of Conflict Onsets. , Journal of Peace Research , 54, (2), 2017, p1 - 18Journal Article, 2017, URL
• Thomas Chadefaux, Conflict Forecasting and its Limits, Data Science, 1, (1), 2018, p1 - 11Journal Article, 2018, URL
• Thomas Chadefaux, What the enemy knows: Common knowledge and the rationality of war, British Journal of Political Science, 50, (4), 2020, p1593 - 1607Journal Article, 2020, URL
• Thomas Chadefaux, Nowhere to go: Why do some civil wars generate more refugees than others?, International Interactions, 45, (2), 2019, p401 - 420Journal Article, 2019
• Boussalis, C., Chadefaux, T., Decadri, S., Salvi, A., Public and Private Information in International Crises: Diplomatic Correspondence and Conflict Anticipation, International Studies Quarterly, 2022Journal Article, 2022, DOI , TARA - Full Text
• Turkoglu Oguzhan, Chadefaux Thomas, The effect of terrorist attacks on attitudes and its duration, Political Science Research and Methods, 2023Journal Article, 2023, DOI , TARA - Full Text
• Thomas Chadefaux, A shape-based approach to conflict forecasting, International Interactions, 2021Journal Article, 2021, DOI , URL , TARA - Full Text
• Thomas Chadefaux, Oguzhan Turkoglu, Replication Data for: The effect of terrorist attacks on attitudes and its duration, Journal of Peace Research, 2021Dataset, 2021, DOI
• Håvard Hegre and ... and Cornelius Fritz ..., The 2023/24 VIEWS Prediction Challenge: Predicting the Number of Fatalities in Armed Conflict, with Uncertainty, Journal of Peace Research, 2025Journal Article, 2025, DOI
• Håvard Hegre and ... and Cornelius Fritz ..., The 2023/24 VIEWS Prediction Challenge: Predicting the Number of Fatalities in Armed Conflict, with Uncertainty, Journal of Peace Research, 2025Journal Article, 2025, DOI
• Thomas Chadefaux and Jian Cao, Dynamic Synthetic Controls, Political Analysis, 2024Journal Article, 2024, DOI
• Thomas Chadefaux and Thomas Schincariol, Temporal Patterns in Migration Flows Evidence from South Sudan, Journal of Forecasting, 44, (2), 2025, p575 - 588Journal Article, 2025, DOI
• T Schincariol, H Frank, T Chadefaux, Temporal Patterns in Conflict Prediction: An improved Shape-Based Approach, Journal of Peace Research, 2025Journal Article, 2025
• Thomas Chadefaux, An automated pattern recognition system for conflict, Journal of Computational Science, 2023Journal Article, 2023, DOI
• Oguzhan Turkoglu, Thomas Chadefaux, Nowhere to go? Why do some civil wars generate more refugees than others?, International Interactions, 2019, p1--20Journal Article, 2019
• Chadefaux, T., What the Enemy Knows: Common Knowledge and the Rationality of War, British Journal of Political Science, 2018, p1-15Journal Article, 2018
• Chadefaux, T., Helbing, D., The rationality of prejudices, PLoS ONE, 7, (2), 2012Journal Article, 2012
• Chien Lu, Thomas Chadefaux, Structured Pixels: Satellite Imagery as the Cause in Causal Effect Estimation, Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Maui, Hawaii, January 6-9, 2026, 2026Conference Paper, 2026, TARA - Full Text
• Yani Xue, Thomas Schincariol, Thomas Chadefaux, Derek Groen, Using machine learning to forecast conflict events for use in forced migration models, Scientific Reports, 2025Journal Article, 2025, DOI , URL
• Thomas Schincariol, Hannah Frank, Thomas Chadefaux, Accounting for variability in conflict dynamics: A pattern-based predictive model, Journal of Peace Research, 2025Journal Article, 2025
• Chadefaux T., Schincariol T., Endogenous conflict and the limits of predictive optimization, EPJ Data Science, 14, (1), 2025Journal Article, 2025, DOI
• Thomas Chadefaux, Early Warning Signals for War in the News, Journal of Peace Research, 51, (1), 2014, p1 - 14Journal Article, 2014, URL
• Helbing, Dirk, Dirk Brockmann, Thomas Chadefaux, Karsten Donnay, Ulf Blanke, Olivia Woolley-Meza, Mehdi Moussaid, Anders Johansson, Jens Krause, Sebastian Schutte, Matjaz Perc, Saving Human Lives: What Complexity Science and Information Systems Can Contribute, Journal of Statistical Physics, June, 2015, p1 - 47Journal Article, 2015, URL
• Thomas Chadefaux, Bargaining over Power: When Do Shifts in Power Lead to War? , International Theory, 3, (2), 2011, p228 - 253Journal Article, 2011, URL
• Thomas Chadefaux, Dirk Helbing, The Rationality of Prejudices, PLoS One, 7, (2), 2012, p1 - 10Journal Article, 2012, URL
• Thomas Chadefaux, Dirk Helbing, How Wealth Accumulation Can Promote Cooperation. , PLoS One, 5, (10), 2010Journal Article, 2010, DOI , URL

• Thomas Chadefaux and Humanitarian Forecast Working Group, Harnessing AI: How to develop and integrate automated prediction systems for humanitarian anticipatory action, CEPR Policy Insight, 2024Journal Article
• Jian Cao and Thomas Chadefaux, 'DSC: Dynamic Synthetic Controls', 2024, -Software, URL
• Thomas Chadefaux, The Triggers of War: Disentangling the Spark from the Powder Keg., 2014Working Paper, URL

There have been more than 200 wars since the start of the 20th century, leading to about 35 million battle deaths. This recurrence of wars despite their tremendous economic, social and institutional costs, may suggest that we are doomed to repeat the errors of the past. Unfortunately, we still know little about the predictability of conflict. In particular, are forecasting failures due to limitations of our models, data, or assumptions? Or are there simply aspects of conflicts that will always remain fundamentally unpredictable? Are there systematic patterns in the escalation and emergence of conflict, and can these patterns be clustered and classified in meaningful ways that help us improve future forecast? My current research generally focuses on the causes of interstate conflict and on their prediction. In particular, I rely on large amounts of fine-grained spatial and temporal data (e.g., newspapers, satellite images, financial markets) to reveal early warning signals for war. Of special interest is whether decision-makers correctly anticipate the risks of war, or rather `sleepwalk' into conflict. Estimating their perceptions of risk is therefore central to my work, which relies on financial data, text analysis of news reports and of diplomatic cables to understand when and how leaders, journalists and the public anticipate wars. Methodologically, my work relies mostly on statistical methods and machine learning approaches. This work leads to three main types of outputs. First, empirical contributions to the question of observers' perceptions of risk. If we can identify the causes of underestimation of risk, we can suggest corrections to learn from history. Second, forecasts of conflicts--here I seek to build on and improve existing forecasts as part of an international network, and on that basis to advise governments (e.g., German Department of Foreign affairs) and international organisations (e..g, EU). Finally, the work leads to theoretical contributions using game theory to better understand the causes of war. This work has been published in the field's top journals.

• Title

  Patterns of Conflict Emergence
  Summary

  Are there recurring patterns in the escalation and emergence of wars? The idea that history may repeat itself is old. But recent advances overcoming methodological and data barriers present an opportunity to identify these recurrences empirically and to examine whether these patterns can be classified to improve forecasts and inform theories of conflict. I propose to combine new methods-using the shape of the sequence of events rather than its raw values-and novel data on conflict from finance, diplomatic cables, and newspapers, to extract typical pre-war motifs. Just as DNA sequencing has been critical to medical diagnoses, PaCE aims to diagnose international politics by uncovering the relevant patterns in the area of conflict. Our goals are to: (i) Identify patterns in the pre-conflict actions using data on conflict events-from the onset of WWI to Hamas's rocket launches-and in their perceptions using data from financial markets (the "crowd's" perception), news articles (the "experts"), and diplomatic documents (the policy-makers). This will allow us to evaluate the patterns of escalation over different timescales-from the decade to the minute. The similarity between temporal sequences will be measured using algorithms which allow for flexible matching, such as Dynamic Time Warping. (ii) Evaluate the utility of these patterns to improve forecasts of conflict with both historical and live out-of-sample predictions. Our results, using shape-based classification methods, will be made public and evaluated in real time. Moreover, using new measures of complexity to distinguish regular, chaotic, and random behavior, I will measure possible fundamental limits to the predictability of conflict events. (iii) Summarize the core features of dangerous patterns into motifs-recurring patterns-that can help build new theories of conflict emergence and escalation. PaCE will build a repository of shapes-a grammar of patterns-to be used as the building blocks of new theories.
  Funding Agency

  European Research Council (ERC)
• Title

  Explaining the variation in refugee flows: the effect of rebel group dynamics in civil conflicts
  Summary
  Funding Agency

  Irish Research Council
  Date From

  2018
  Date To

  2022
• Title

  The Patterns of Conflict Escalation: Why leaders, markets, and analysts fail to anticipate wars
  Summary
  Funding Agency

  Enterprise Ireland
  Date From

  2018
  Date To

  2019
• Title

  Explaining variation in the diffusion of civil wars: the role of short-term triggers.
  Summary
  Funding Agency

  Irish Research Council
  Date From

  2017
  Date To

  2021
• Title

  The steps to war: Developing an automated pattern recognition system for conflict
  Summary
  Funding Agency

  Trinity College Dublin
  Date From

  2019
  Date To

  2023

Politics,

• Best paper award, American Political Science Review 2018
• Best visualisation award 2014
• Best Paper award, Oxford, "Internet, Politics, Policy" conference Sept. 2012
• Best visualisation award, Journal of Peace Research 2014

• Midwest Political Science Association
• American Political Science Association
• American Economic Association

• . Editorial Board Member, Data Science
• Journal reviewer I have reviewed article manuscripts for the following journals (in alphabetical order): Advances in Complex Systems, American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Empirical Economics, International Interactions, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Journal of Global Security Studies, Journal of Information Technology \& Politics, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, PLoS One, Political Science Research and Methods. 2008-
• External examiner, PhD viva, University of St Andrews Jan. 2020
• External examiner, hiring committee, UCD 2018