Overview
This project applies computational text analysis to the study of international relations and climate security. The main motivations are twofold: (1) to detect latent patterns in large bodies of academic and policy texts that are not accessible to conventional close-reading methods, and (2) to build open tools that lower the technical barrier for IR researchers to use NLP methods.
Word2Vec Model Explorer
The Word2Vec Model Explorer is a browser-based interface for exploring word embeddings trained on a corpus of climate security academic literature. It allows researchers to query nearest neighbours (semantically similar terms), visualise vector arithmetic (e.g. "conflict + climate minus development"), and inspect semantic clusters across the corpus.
The model was trained using the word2vec skip-gram architecture on a curated collection of peer-reviewed articles on climate security and related topics. The explorer runs entirely in the browser with no server-side processing, making it fast to deploy and easy to share.
cntrlfinder
The cntrlfinder toolkit is a Python-based utility for systematic content analysis of policy documents and academic texts. It automates common preprocessing steps (tokenisation, stopword removal, n-gram extraction) and provides frequency and co-occurrence analysis tailored to IR and policy research contexts.
Discourse Analyses
Corpus analysis of institutional and media texts to map how policy actors construct and contest climate-related issues:
- Climate Change in the UN Security Council: An Analysis of Discourses and Organizational Trends
International Studies Perspectives 23(3): 290–312 (2022). Systematic coding of UN Security Council meeting records on climate and security. - Chinese Crisis Communication in the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Discourse Analysis
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 51(2): 169–193 (2022). Corpus analysis of People's Daily framing in response to international media criticism. - Assad's Strategic Narrative: The Role of Communication in the Syrian Civil War
Contemporary Review of the Middle East 2(4): 313–327 (2015). Qualitative discourse analysis of Syrian government messaging.
Policy Coherence Analyses
Systematic coding and content analysis of national policy documents to assess how countries integrate climate, peace, and security objectives:
- Climate Security Policy Coherence and Awareness Analysis: Guatemala and Central America
CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, 2023. Multi-document coherence analysis across national climate and security policy frameworks. - Climate Security Policy Coherence and Awareness Analysis: East Africa and Kenya
CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, 2022. Handle - Climate Security Policy Coherence and Awareness Analysis: West Africa and Senegal
CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, 2022. Handle - Climate Security Policy Coherence and Awareness Analysis: MENA
CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, 2022. Five-country analysis covering Jordan, Libya, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Yemen. - Climate Security Policy Coherence and Awareness Analysis: Philippines
CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, 2024. - Policy Discourses on Climate Change, Peace, and Security in Somalia
CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, 2024. With F. Schapendonk. - Policy Discourses on Climate Change, Mobility, and Conflict and Fragility: Jordan
CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, 2024. With F. Schapendonk et al.
Systematic Literature Reviews
Structured synthesis of large bodies of academic literature using systematic search protocols and computational screening tools:
- Reframing Climate-Induced Socio-Environmental Conflicts: A Systematic Review
International Studies Review 23(3): 696–725 (2021). Systematic review of 2,000+ records; first application of cntrlfinder to IR literature. - Intersections of Religion and Climate-Related Security Risks: Insights from a Systematic Review
Worldviews 29(1): 71–98 (2024). With J. Tarusarira and R. I. Elnur. Systematic review of religion-climate-security interactions.
Portfolio Analyses
Computational screening and analysis of large project and research portfolios to assess climate-security integration across multilateral institutions:
- Climate Security Programming Dashboard for Climate Finance (CSPDxCF)
Interactive tool combining geospatial conflict-climate data with portfolio screening for GCF-eligible countries. See also the companion guidebook and methodology (CGIAR, 2023). - Climate Security Programming Dashboard for Climate Finance (CSPDxCF): Dataset on Compound Risk Exposure
CGIAR, 2025. With H. A. Achicanoy Estrella. Machine-readable dataset covering compound climate-security risk exposure for all GCF-eligible countries. - Integrated Climate Security Programming in Climate Finance: An Analysis of Multilateral Climate Funds
CGIAR, 2022. Portfolio analysis of GCF, AF, CIF, GEF, and LDCF project databases to assess conflict-sensitivity integration.
Reproducibility
All code is available on GitHub under open licenses. Replication datasets are provided where publication terms allow.