John O'Loughlin

Last November and December, a series of events and conferences marked the 20th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995, the negotiated agreement that ended the Bosnian war and devised a complex governance structure for the country. The Dayton agreement was not a democratic agreement. It was not even...

John O’Loughlin has become the first foreigner in more than 100 years to win the Semenov-Tyan-Shansky gold medal for research on Russia. It is the highest research award of the Russian Geographical Society typically targeted toward Russian and, previously, Soviet scholars working in the area of the former Soviet Union...

Novorossiya is frozen. Last week Oleg Tsarev, leader of the ‘parliament’ that ostensibly united the eastern Ukraine separatist entities, the Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk Peoples Republic (LPR), announced the project was now on hold. The reason Tsarev gave was that Novorossiya was incompatible with the Minsk II...

One year after Russia's Vladimir Putin pulled Crimea back under the purview of his government, polling data shows the majority of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians living there like this turn of events. So, was it an act of repression, or a welcome succession? Listen to The Current interview

One year since Crimea was annexed by Russia, polling reveals that (with the notable exception of the Tatars) the new order enjoys legitimacy among the population. Russia’s annexation of Crimea was an illegal act under international law. It is also an act that enjoys the widespread support of the peninsula’s...

The downing of Malaysian Airlines (MH) Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in the summer of 2014 was a horrific crime. Innocent travelers from 10 countries lost their lives, with the Netherlands losing 193 citizens. The Dutch Safety Board is due to present a comprehensive final report on the cause of...

John O'Loughlin received the Myron Weiner award of the International Studies Association for distinguished scholarship at the association's annual meeting in New Orleans on February 20th. Before the reception in his honor and the presentation of a plaque, his research over the past 40 years on spatial analysis in political...

John O'Loughlin was interviewed in a Russian - language TV report on a talk he and his colleague, Gerard Toal (a former student of Johno's from Monaghan, now at Virginia Tech) gave at the Kennan Institute Wilson Center in Washington DC February 13, 2015. Watch the report here .

It is well known that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine, annexing Crimea in March 2004, and sponsoring rebels thereafter in eastern Ukraine, generated high levels of support for him in Russia in 2014. But how popular is Putin in contested Ukraine, namely in Crimea and the southeast swath...

A massive new University of Colorado Boulder study indicates there is a statistical link between hotter temperatures generated by climate change and the risk of armed conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. CU-Boulder Professor John O’Loughlin led a research team that assessed more than 78,000 armed conflicts between 1980 and 2012 in...