The Cross-border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) programme is a leading international research initiative that generates evidence-driven insights into the dynamics of conflict, instability, and resilience in fragile regions worldwide. It focuses on cross-border challenges that shape instability, including issues of governance, climate stress, informal trade, and community survival strategies in conflict-affected contexts. XCEPT works with a network of global researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to deepen understanding of how fragile environments operate and how policies can better support stability and peace. By engaging with both local and international stakeholders, XCEPT seeks to bridge the gap between research and practice, ensuring that evidence informs action. The programme is particularly committed to highlighting civilian agency, understanding local adaptation strategies, and exploring how vulnerabilities are shaped by broader regional and global trends. With an emphasis on interdisciplinary and comparative approaches, XCEPT supports studies that bring together perspectives from different fields to create more comprehensive solutions. Its mission is not only to study conflict and instability but also to generate actionable knowledge that can guide policy interventions, empower communities, and enhance resilience in areas most affected by complex socio-political and environmental pressures.

The XCEPT research programme has launched a new funding opportunity aimed at commissioning innovative research projects that investigate the linkages between climate change, informal trade networks, and instability in conflict-affected borderlands. This call seeks concept notes for projects that explore how informal cross-border trade functions as a coping mechanism in the face of climate stress, while also assessing its potential to fuel instability and conflict. Research is expected to address the conditions under which these informal networks become either adaptive or destabilising forces, and to analyse their implications for communities, particularly in terms of gendered impacts, access to resources, and distribution of risks and benefits. The initiative is designed to generate new empirical evidence that can shed light on the convergence of climate challenges, weak governance, and fragile economies. A single award of up to £120,000 GBP will be provided to support a 12-month project starting in December 2025. Studies are expected to focus on regions central to XCEPT’s work, including the Middle East, Horn of Africa, Sahel and Coastal West Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Myanmar. Comparative and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged to capture variations across diverse contexts and produce policy-relevant insights.