Abstract: Research to date on the links (and non-links) between water and violent conflict has improved our understanding substantially. Based on the picture emerging from recent work, this presentation will suggest some directions for innovation and improvement in water-conflict scholarship. Specific themes include (a) rethinking how we conceptualize the relationship between water conflict and water cooperation; (b) shifting how we measure water abundance and water scarcity; and (c) bridging the gap across levels of analysis that have been treated as distinct, both theoretically and empirically, in most of the literature. These themes are illustrated through a discussion of different approaches to testing for the existence of a “water resource curse.”