This research project investigates the development of boomtowns in North and South Kivu that emerge from dynamics of violent conflict and (forced) mobility. The project is part of a broader research interest in the dynamic relationship between violent conflict and urbanization. Urbanization processes of agglomerations that have grown from IDP concentrations or from mining extraction serve as case-studies to investigate socio-economic transformations in a context of protracted violence and conflict from a spatial perspective. Rural-urban transformations and boomtown-urbanization in the Kivu provinces are being approached as demographic, spatial, socio-economic as well as political process. The research project is connected to the CRG research cluster of Resources and Conflict as well as the cluster Governance in Confict.