THOMAS MORGAN Research Fellow, Institute for Economics and Peace 14 Oxford Rd West Bridgford, NG2 5JQ +44 7551 784221 [email protected]
Education
University of Sydney 2011 Master of Economics (Economics/Econometrics)
University of Adelaide 2009 Diploma of Applied Economics (International) Executive Dean’s Award
University of Melbourne 2007 Bachelor of Laws 2006 Bachelor of Arts (English)
Employment
2011- Research Fellow Institute for Economics and Peace 2010-11 Research Analyst Institute for Economics and Peace 2006 Residential Tutor in Humanities and Law, Whitley College, University of Melbourne
Publications
Book Chapters
“Measuring Terrorism with the Global Terrorism Index” with Daniel Hyslop in Understanding Terrorism: A Socio-Economic Perspective, Emerald, 2013 (forthcoming).
“The Global Peace Index 2012” with Camilla Schippa in Sipri Yearbook 2012: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Oxford University Press, 2012
“Peace and the Media” with Tim Macintyre in Global Peace Report 2010, InnoVatio, 2010
Reports
2013 Global Peace Index, “Six-Year Trends in Peace” Institute for Economics and Peace
2013 UK Peace Index (Lead Researcher, Index Designer) Institute for Economics and Peace
“Pillars of Peace”, 2013, Institute for Economics and Peace
2012 Global Terrorism Index (Lead Researcher, Index Designer) Institute for Economics and Peace
“Violence Containment Spending in the United States”, 2012, Institute for Economics and Peace
2012 Global Peace Index, Institute for Economics and Peace
2012 US Peace Index (Lead Researcher, Index Designer) Institute for Economics and Peace
2011 Global Peace Index, “New Dimensions of Peace: Society, Economy, and the Media” Institute for Economics and Peace
“Measuring Peace in the Media” (Lead Researcher) Institute for Economics and Peace
2011 US Peace Index (Lead Researcher, Index Designer) Institute for Economics and Peace
2010 Media Peace Index (Lead Researcher) Institute for Economics and Peace
Research Interests
The work of The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) focuses on the intersection of negative peace, positive peace, and the economic costs and benefits of changes in peacefulness around the world. As such, it seeks to better understand the drivers of violence, if and how they relate to the attitudes, institutions, and structures that lead to peaceful environments and how these shifts in violence and its drivers can be appropriately measured, tracked, and assessed over time. IEP is responsible for the Global Peace Index, the world’s preeminent measure of peace at the nation-state level, as well as a variety of national level indices (the US Peace Index, the UK Peace Index, Global Terrorism Index) and research papers that look at the cost of violence to the global economy.
My own personal research interests at IEP are focused on changes in the level of violence since 1950, particularly in the US, UK, and Australia. Long-term downward trends in various measures of direct violence seemed to reach a floor during the 1950s before subsequently increasing (at times quite markedly) for the next four decades. This has been followed by a swift return to a downward trend, the cause of which has been the subject of intense speculation across a number of academic disciplines. One area that has received comparatively less attention is the micro- sociological theory of violence, which looks at how face to face interactions lead to violent behaviour, and thus how environmental design can help to alleviate violence. However, quantitatively tracking changes in environmental design at the local level, as well as the general security environment is difficult. Doing so, however, would allow for comparisons between the latent levels of peacefulness of a society over time, thus allowing for a more nuanced understanding of peacefulness than only comparing key violence indicators between different time periods (violent crime rate, homicide rate etc.), which would allow for some assessment of whether recent falls in violence are related to long term structural, attitudinal and socio-economic change, or whether they are partly or solely the result of state and private sector violence containment spending, which would imply that violence containment, rather than peace per se, was on the increase.
IEP has already estimated the size of all violence related spending in the US in 2010 (in the paper “Violent Containment Spending in the United States”1). I would like to extend this analysis to the UK, as well as provide estimates for prior years in the US, in ten year intervals dating back to 1950. This would give a much more comprehensive picture of responses to violence over time, and perhaps offer an additional explanation for the recent decline in violence, over and above the standard political, economic, and sociological explanations.
The other area of particular interest to me is the connection between peace, governance, business, and corruption. Prior research conducted by IEP has found that perceptions of corruption are closely linked to governance and business performance, which seem to be the key drivers of development in post-conflict situations. However, accurate corruption data is notoriously difficult to capture, whilst existing national-level survey data has been underutilized. IEP’s research has found that there is a particularly strong association between perceived levels of corruption in the police, military, and judiciary, and violence. I aim to explore these links in greater detail, to try and understand how corruption can trigger or abet violence, and in what contexts this happens. The link between corruption and peace also seems to significantly vary in strength when looking at different geographical areas, development levels, and government types. Understanding why this variation exists could have significant implications for prioritizing anti-corruption efforts in post-conflict environments.
1 http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Violence-Containment-in-the-US-Report.pdf