In this talk, Professor Goldsmith will describe the work of the Atrocity Forecasting Project (AFP) and discuss how its genocide forecasts might be useful for early warning and prevention. Professor Goldsmith was a founding member of the AFP in 2009 which produced two sets of genocide forecasts for the periods 2011-2015 and 2016-2020. Currently, the project is assessing its forecasts by analysing data from the United Nations, Genocide Watch, and the Political Instability Task Force and the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network. Professor Goldsmith will discuss the accuracy of forecasting as well as the challenges in prediction. He will also describe a new data set they have developed to try and address problems with previous approaches to forecasting. Their Targeted Mass Killing (TMK) dataset provides data on 205 TMK episodes for the period 1946-2017 with annualised information on perpetrator intent, severity, targeted groups and a host of additional variables, and a binary indicator of genocide and politicide that can serve as an alternative to existing measures.  He will highlight some of the strengths and capabilities of the new data set.
 

Benjamin E. Goldsmith is a Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. His research interests are in international relations, comparative foreign policy, and atrocity forecasting. He is the author of the book, Imitation in International Relations: Observational Learning, Analogies, and Foreign Policy in Russia and Ukraine. Furthermore, he has published articles in leading academic journals including the European Journal of International Relations, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, and World Politics. His research has been supported by grants from the Australian Government’s Responsibility to Protect Fund and the Australian Research Council (ARC), including an ARC Future Fellowship (2015-18). He is a founding member of the executives of the Australian Society for Quantitative Political Science and the Pacific International Politics Conference. He holds a PhD in Political Science (Michigan 2001) and an M.A. in Russian Area Studies (Georgetown 1995). Before joining ANU in 2017, he taught at other universities in Australia, Singapore, and the United States.