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Common themes or targets of research in genocide studies include: the history of genocide; the factors that contribute to it; the process by which genocide unfolds; the role of different actors within that process, including those of perpetrators, victims, witnesses, bystanders, rescuers and resisters; the role of external third parties who may choose to intervene, permit, prevent, facilitate, or ignore genocide; and the debate over the definition of the term itself.

The Genocide Studies Program has contributed to these discussions in many ways.  GSP Director Ben Kiernan did so in his 2007 book, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale University Press), as did former GSP Fellow Adam Jones in his multi-edition Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (2006, 2009).

Scholars can learn many things about genocide from making comparisons across time and space.  Broadly, two strategies exist: examining known instances of genocide (or of mass atrocity that possess some characteristics of genocide) to search for commonalities, or examining a broader spectrum of cases to consider why genocide (or mass atrocity) arose in some instances and not in others.

Much of the work considered in the case-specific case studies contributes implicitly to the comparative genocide project – although, for some scholars, the project of comparing traumatic events like genocide risks reducing intense human experiences to mere data points. As such, not all case-specific work is meant to be comparative, although it may nonetheless contribute to our broader understanding of genocide.

Conversely, when comparative research successfully identifies factors that are present in all (or most) cases, including in a single case where it may not appear prominent and might easily be otherwise overlooked, can help us to understand even one specific genocide.