Research Interests
'Armed Conflict and Maternal Health in Sub-Saharan Africa', FRIPRO Young Researcher Talent Project, Headed by Gudrun Østby.
'Conflict Trends'. Collaborative project with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Project Director.
'Youth Exclusion and Political Violence', project funded by the Research Council of Norway (2008-2012).
'Security Implications of Climate Change', project funded by the Research Council of Norway (2009-2012). Director of sub-project on Urban Violence.
General research interests:
* Demography and political violence
* Climate change, environmental change and armed conflict
* The politics of census-taking
* Demographic consequences of armed conflict
Background
Languages spoken:
Norwegian, English
Working experience:
2017 - : Director at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
2017: Research Director, Conditions of Violence and Peace
2013- Research Professor, PRIO
2011-12 Research Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
2007- Senior Researcher, Centre for the Study of Civil War, PRIO.
2010 - 2017: Editor, Journal of Peace Research (JPR). Associate Editor (2006-2010), Editorial Committee Member (2004-2006), Book Review Editor 2004-05.
2002-2006 PhD Candidate and Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of Civil War, PRIO.
2005-06 Visiting Scholar at the East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii.
1999
Investigations Assistant on the 'Population Project', The UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Office of the Prosecutor. The Hague, Netherlands.
1996-98
Secretary General, Socialist Youth League (Sosialistisk Ungdom) of Norway.
1995 (summer)
Research Assistant, Statistics Norway, Division for Social and Demographic Research.
Education:
PhD in Political Science, University of Oslo, 2007.
Cand. Polit., Political Science, University of Oslo 2002. Courses in African politics, Statistics, Demography, Institutional theory and Nation, state and nationalism.
Cand. mag., University of Oslo 1995. Courses in Middle East/North African Studies, Demography, Political Science, Economics
Blog Posts
Posted by Gudrun Østby, Olga Shemyakina, Andreas Forø Tollefsen, Henrik Urdal & Marijke Verpoorten on Monday, 14 February 2022
We examined more than 200,000 records in 15 African countries. As more coronavirus vaccines begin to reach the developing world, global health authorities are pointing out the need for other vaccines as well. UNICEF recently launched a record $9.4 billion emergency appeal to help more than 327 million people — including 177 million children — affected ... Read more »
Posted by Henrik Urdal on Wednesday, 15 May 2019
The Second World War had a lasting effect on me. Especially because my beloved father was imprisoned at Grini (west of Oslo). And we were informed that every time there was a British bombing, prisoners would be shot. So, every night the air raid siren went, my mother and I ... Read more »
Posted by Henrik Urdal on Thursday, 20 September 2018
Plan S.: PRIO would far rather pay fees to ensure that all our publications in subscription journals are made available via open access than be forced to publish our best research in lower quality journals. The new European Plan S – an open access (OA) policy for research results – ... Read more »
In 2017, approximately 90,000 people died as the direct result of armed conflict. This figure is down for the third year in a row, and is now 31 percent lower than in 2014. Nearly a third of all conflicts – and four of the 10 most serious wars worldwide – ... Read more »
Since the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Linus Pauling in 1962, contributions to nuclear disarmament have recurrently been an explicit motivation for granting the Prize.1 According to the Nobel Peace Prize committee, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) received the Prize this year for creating new momentum ... Read more »
These are the key conclusions from the first systematical review of the empirical, quantitative literature on the relationship between education and civil conflict. Evidence from 30 statistical studies indicate that Increasing education levels overall have pacifying effects Rapid expansions of higher education is not a threat Education inequalities between groups ... Read more »
Headlines from battlefields in Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine give the impression that the world is becoming ever more violent. Indeed, since 2013 the number of armed conflicts in the world and the number of battle deaths has risen. Fortunately, the long-term trends nevertheless driving the waning of war ... Read more »
The UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals are ready for adoption. For the first time, the UN will measure the incidence of one of the most controversial, but important, development indicators: the amount of armed conflict in the world. On 25 September this year, a UN summit will adopt the new ... Read more »
Posted by Idean Salehyan & Henrik Urdal on Monday, 9 February 2015
Quality data is at the heart of quality research. The scholarly community depends on valid, reliable, and easily accessible data in order to empirically test our theories of social and political processes. Yet quantitative data is not “truth” in an absolute sense, but rather, is a numeric representation of complex ... Read more »
On 10 December Nobel’s Peace Prize 2014 is awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai. Critical voices have claimed that their work is more about rights activism than promoting peace and that there is no obvious association between education and peace. Research into the causes of war suggests, however, that ... Read more »
Posted by Henrik Urdal on Friday, 5 September 2014
Humanitarian organizations may easily succumb to the temptation to misuse numbers and statistics in order to promote their own causes. Does the end justify the means? Disasters are most dangerous for moms reported Save the Children’s Carolyn S Miles in Huffington Post when presenting the organization’s State of the World’s ... Read more »
When Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan known for her work in human rights and environmental conservation, including efforts to fight deforestation, won the Nobel Peace Prize last month, many took note that the Nobel Committee had evidently expanded its notion of “peace.” “Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure ... Read more »