The Conflict Culture Research Network launched in 2016. As a partnership among the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and over a dozen university- and museum-based researchers, the CCRN has three main research goals:

• To study cultural destruction as a form of civilian targeting during conflict;
• To investigate the material remains of cultural destruction in order to understand everyday violence and survival; and
• To undertake the systematic collection and analysis of data about cultural destruction, cultural protection, and post-conflict cultural interventions.

The network brings together subject matter experts in archaeology, anthropology, and other allied fields; specialists in conflict studies from political science, geography, and sociology; and methodological experts from the data sciences. This research community has developed common definitions and coding standards that will enable the future development of large-scale datasets documenting and quantifying the destruction of cultural heritage.

For more information about the network, please visit the Conflict Culture Research Network.