Peace and conflict studies is an academic field which identifies and analyses violent and nonviolent behaviours as well as the structural mechanisms attending social conflicts with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition.

A variation on this, Peace studies (irenology), is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, deescalation, and solution of conflicts. This is in contrast to war studies (polemology) which has as its aim the efficient attainment of victory in conflicts. Disciplines involved may include political science, geography, economics, psychology, sociology, international relations, history, anthropology, religious studies, and gender studies, as well as a variety of others.

Cost of conflict is a tool which attempts to calculate the price of conflict to the human race. The idea is to examine this cost, not only in terms of the deaths and casualties and the economic costs borne by the people involved, but also the social, developmental, environmental and strategic costs of conflict. The approach considers direct costs of conflict, for instance human deaths, expenditure, destruction of land and physical infrastructure; as well as indirect costs that impact a society, for instance migration, humiliation, growth of extremism and lack of civil society.

Strategic Foresight Group, a think tank in India, has developed a Cost of Conflict Series for countries and regions involved in protracted conflicts. This tool is aimed at assesing past, present and future costs looking at a wide range of parameters.