The core of the barriers research agenda is to understand what stands in the way of parties reaching agreement or successfully resolving a conflict, and to identify strategies for overcoming these barriers. Over the last three decades, this research agenda has expanded to incorporate new disciplinary perspectives and a broader range of methodological approaches. Here we draw together the important developments in the barriers research agenda represented in the contributions to this special issue of Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict. We discuss key themes related to recent work on relational barriers: application to real-world cases and the particulars of context, attention to power relations and power asymmetries, and the link between emotions and barriers to conflict resolution. Finally, we identify important directions for future research on barriers to the resolution of asymmetric conflict suggested by the contributions to this volume.