Ravinder Bhavnani

Ravinder Bhavnani is a Professor of International Relations/Political Science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. His research focuses on the micro-foundations of violence, utilizing agent-based computational modeling and empirical analysis to explore actor behavior, social mechanisms, and emergent structures. He holds affiliations with the Centre for Finance and Development and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy.

Educated at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (PhD), Bhavnani specializes in armed conflicts, terrorism, urban-rural dynamics, and regional expertise in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Key themes in his work include surveillance effects on collective action, urban conflict morphology, and resilience to socio-economic crises.

His research outputs span journals like American Journal of Political Science and Journal of Peace Research, with a focus on computational methods and policy-relevant insights. He has co-edited volumes on global conflict trends and serves on editorial boards such as the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Advising and grants include collaborations on projects analyzing protest dynamics, malnutrition resilience, and segregation effects. His work bridges theoretical frameworks with applied conflict analysis, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches to peacebuilding and violence prevention.