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Professor Dr Paul W. Thurner
Associate Senior Fellow
Professor Dr Paul W. Thurner
Professor Dr Paul W. Thurner is an Associate Senior Fellow at SIPRI. He is also Chair of Empirical Political Research and Policy Analysis at the Department of Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich).
Paul W. Thurner brings extensive expertise in network analysis, applying cutting-edge quantitative methodologies to international relations and interdisciplinary peace and conflict research. Over his career, he has directed numerous high-impact projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF). His pioneering work has uncovered the complex structures and dynamics of global arms transfer networks, evaluated their direct impact on armed conflicts, and generated novel empirical data sets spanning interwar weapons transfers to the military capabilities of non-state rebel groups.
Building on this foundational research, his current focus centres on leveraging AI-supported methods to monitor complex militarization processes. By integrating machine learning with structural analysis, his present work seeks to advance real-time tracking across military production, procurement and international transfers, pushing the analytical boundaries of defence economics and security studies.
Subject expertise
Armaments (R&D, production, procurement, transfers), conflict
Regional expertise
Global, EU
CONTACT Professor Dr Paul W. Thurner
Languages
English, German, French, Latin
Education
PhD, University of Mannheim
External publications
- Racek, D., Thurner, P. W. and Kauermann, G., ‘Capturing the spatio-temporal diffusion effects of armed conflict: A nonparametric smoothing approach’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society, vol. 189, no. 3 (2026).
- Rudolph, L., Haggerty, L. and Thurner, P. W., ‘Examining public support for Ukraine’s defense against autocratic aggression’, Nature Communications, vol. 17 (2026).
- Racek, D. et al., ‘Unsupervised detection of building destruction during war from publicly available radar satellite imagery’, PNAS Nexus, vol. 4, no. 12 (Dec. 2025).
- Mehrl, M. and Thurner, P. W., ‘The Interwar Period International Trade in Arms (IPITA): A new dataset’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 69, no. 2–3 (2025).
- Fritz, C. et al., ‘Exponential random graph models for dynamic signed networks: An application to international relations’, Political Analysis, vol. 33, no. 3 (2025).
- Mehrl, M., Seussler, D. and Thurner, P. W., ‘Sharing rivals, sending weapons: Rivalry and cooperation in the international arms trade, 1920–1939’, Review of International Organizations, vol. 20 (2025).
- Lebacher, M., Thurner, P. W. and Kauermann, G., ‘Censored regression for modelling international small arms trading and its ‘forensic’ use for exploring unreported trades’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C: Applied Statistics, vol. 70, no. 4 (2021).
- Mehrl, M. and Thurner, P. W., ‘Military technology and human loss in intrastate conflict: The conditional impact of arms imports’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 64, no. 6 (2020).
- Thurner, P. W. et al., ‘Network interdependencies and the evolution of the international arms trade’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 63, no. 7 (2019). (Bruce Russett Award Best Paper Journal of Conflict Resolution 2019.)
- Pamp, O. et al., ‘The build-up of coercive capacities: Arms imports and the outbreak of violent intrastate conflicts’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 55, no. 4 (2018).