Monday 25 June 2018, 5pm
Seminar Room A, Manor Road Building, University of Oxford
All Welcome

A seminar with Mike Martin, Visiting Research Fellow, Department of War Studies, King’s College London

CCW's Conflict Platform team is delighted to host Mike Martin for a seminar on ‘Why We
Fight’, drawing on his recently published book of the same name.

When we go to war, morality, religion and ideology often take the blame. Mike argues that
the opposite is true: rather than driving violence, these things help to reduce it. While we
resort to ideas and values to justify or interpret warfare, something else is really
propelling us towards conflict: our subconscious desires, shaped by millions of years of
evolution.

His previous books include An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict
and Crossing the Congo: Over Land and Water in a Hard Place, the latter of which was
shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Adventure Travel Writing Award in 2016.