Description
This roundtable launches a newly published forum in International Peacekeeping that speak to central questions about the past, present, and future of peacekeeping studies. The forum considers how peacekeeping should be studied at a moment when multidimensional UN missions are closing and the overall number of deployed peacekeepers is in sharp decline. While some interpret this as the end of peacekeeping, contributors argue that what we are witnessing is not disappearance but transformation. The forum identifies new directions for research: moving beyond mission-level analysis to the study of practices and legacies; situating UN operations in a broader repertoire of international conflict management, including regional interventions and special political missions; and analyzing peacekeeping itself as a dependent variable shaped by geopolitical, institutional, and host-state dynamics. Taken together, these interventions call on scholars to rethink the conceptual and methodological foundations of peacekeeping studies, ensuring that the field remains responsive to both academic debates and evolving practice. Bringing together contributors of this forum, this roundtable provides a space for reflection on how we study peacekeeping, what questions should drive the research agenda, and how peacekeeping scholarship can continue to inform international efforts to manage conflict in an era of shifting global order.
