War and Data on Armed Conflicts

Dr. Motomichi Igarashi received his Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Sussex in 2013. Since then, he has conducted research and lectured on security issues at Hokkaido University and Kansai University. In 2023, he was appointed Professor of International Relations at the School of Policy Studies, Kansai University.In 2016, he published his first solo-authored book, Humanitarianism and Trusteeship: From Colonial Administration to Peace Building, in Japanese. This book, based on his doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Sussex, garnered attention for its innovative analysis of power structures in peacebuilding and was reviewed in various newspapers and journals. In 2023, he published his second solo-authored book, War and Data: How the Dead Became Numbers, in Japanese, which earned him the Osaragi Jiro Rondan Award for 2023. The Osaragi Jiro Rondan Award is an academic prize sponsored by the major Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, awarded to the most outstanding book in the fields of politics and economics within a year.Dr. Igarashi has authored various papers on security issues, including “Scientific Data on Civilian Casualties and International Criminal Court” (2020), “U.S. Reluctant Interventions and Sovereignty” (2019), and “The Struggle over the Representation of Armed Conflicts: Human Rights NGOs, Sovereign States, and Post-Colonial Conflicts” (2018). All of these papers are peer-reviewed and written in Japanese.Regarding research funding, Dr. Igarashi has received grants four times from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and once from a private organization. His current research project analyzes the impact of digital witnesses on the generation of armed conflict data, supported by a grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2022-2025).

• Preface.- Introduction: Doubting Expert Opinions.- International Standardization of Combatant Protection.- Evolution of Civilian Protection Norms.- Emergence of Conflict Witnesses.- Counting the Dead: War and Statistics.- Unearthing the Bodies: War and Forensic Science.- Chasing Chemical Weapons: War and Chemistry.- Conclusion: Is It Possible to Know the True Face of War?.