Valka-Mir Human Security R&D

Valka-Mir Human Security operates as a Behavioral Research Partnership for Non-Lethal Conflict Intervention by diplomatic, military, and humanitarian interventionists in under and ungoverned spaces of violent civil conflict.

Valka-Mir’s focus is on civilian participation as perpetrators, victims, and enablers of genocide, ethnic & cultural cleansing, wartime sexual violence, insurgency, terrorism, smuggling, and human trafficking. We also investigate and analyze cultural inability to adapt to overwhelming globalizing changes in trade, travel, technology, and communication.

Valka-Mir conducts original field research in denied and dangerous research settings, using data collection and analytical methods focused on the psychosocial-emotional aspects of the civilian community that drives the conflict and inhibits resolution by normal means of military, diplomatic, and humanitarian intervention.

Valka-Mir also conducts original training in the psychosocial-emotional variables of communities-in-violent-conflict. This training supports interventionist personnel who are deploying into violent conflict zones in order to train, message, engage, or research, these communities.

Valka-Mir was formed by PhD researchers-trainers for the express purpose of researching violent civil conflicts in dangerous research settings. We employ the Human Domain Matrix™, a proprietary analytical tool that we use for data collection and analysis, along with teaching and training.

Valka-Mir’s members constitute a unique assemblage of academics who were former rebel soldiers, Peshmerga fighters, and special forces operators, as well as survivors of genocide and extreme violent conflicts. We are drawn from every continent and possess firsthand experience in surviving, researching, and participating in violent communal conflict that collectively covers nearly every ongoing warzone. Valka-Mir partners collectively speak many languages that are required by diplomatic, military, and humanitarian interventionists. This linguistic capacity allows us to incorporate an understanding of the deepest linguistic nuances and employ cultural psycholinguistics into message construction and research development.

Each Valka-Mir member is cross-trained in advanced applied psychology, sociology, and anthropology with doctorates in the pathology of violent ethnic and cultural conflict. Valka-Mir is an innovator in conflict-intervention social science support because of its cutting-edge research, training, and data visualization. Valka-Mir links pre-deployment training to the consumption of social science research data and its employment in message construction and assessment.

Our training and research services enable interventionists to psychologically and emotionally enter the complex world of their target audiences in order to more effectively message and influence their behavior and achieve desired psychological-emotional affect and societal effect. Valka-Mir uses mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) research design to collect and analyze data. Qualitative methods include in-depth case studies, ethnography, individual interviews and focus groups that are specifically focused on phenomenological inquiry to achieve in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the complex, ongoing, lived psychosocial and emotional experiences of the target audience segments.

Valka-Mir researchers have decades of peer reviewed data collection, analysis and experience in developing research studies, designing qualitative and quantitative research questions (RQs) and Research Instruments (RIs) that are used to support reliable and scientifically validated field and desk research. Each researcher has a substantive networks of community gatekeepers and trained data collectors in the field who collect data in hard-to-reach locations.

Valka-Mir research partners and associates have familial connections to the target audiences that are of interest to conflict intervention programs which provides research access and placement into these difficult or otherwise denied spaces without creating undue notice or interest. Once within their home spaces, cultural, religious, ethnic and other social lines of belonging and ownership, as well as the strict non-attribution of the research, provides them with protection that would never be afforded to other Western researchers. This process achieves a significant level of standardization based on the actual target audience differences in thought, emotion, and historical narrative experience.

As a behavioral team team, Valka-Mir supports the efforts of diplomatic, military, and humanitarian interventionists by providing a robust network with operational reach into multiple, hard to access regions across the globe. The team uses the most advanced applied research, training, assessment, and cutting-edge social science methods to support operators in both deployed and training environments.