This encyclopaedia provides a comprehensive overview of major theories and approaches to the study of peace and conflict across different humanities and social sciences disciplines. Peace and conflict studies (PCS) is one of the major sub-disciplines of international studies (including political sciences and international relations), and has emerged from a need to understand war, related systems and concepts and how to respond to it afterward. PCS has become an important site for inter-disciplinary studies, spanning war studies, security and development; state formation and statebuilding; law and human rights; civil society and political authority; philosophy and religion; the anthropology and history of political order; environmental dimensions; as well as the arts and literature, psychology, and material conditions of peace, peacemaking, peace agreements, the peaceful state, the nature of regional and international cooperation, and organisation, and more. The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Peace and Conflict Studies will bring together leading scholars from different disciplines to provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource on peace and conflict studies ever produced.