Ragnhild Nordås

Ragnhild Nordås is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, a faculty affiliate of the Program in International and Comparative Studies, and a faculty associate at the Center for Political Studies, Institute for Social Research. She is also a Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and Deputy Editor of Journal of Peace Research.

In March 2010, she received her Ph.D. in political science from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her PhD work was completed at the Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW) at PRIO, a Norwegian Center of Excellence. She has been a visiting research fellow at the Kroc Institute, University of Notre Dame (2010-2011), and a fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School (2008-2010).

Ragnhild Nordås´ core research interests are in political violence and repression. Current research projects focus in particular on the causes, dynamics, and consequences of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, the costs of contention, and religious dimensions of intrastate armed conflict. She also has an interest in and has published on demographic factors in conflict and repression, and the proposed link between climate change and conflict.

She published the global dataset on Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict (SVAC) with Dara Kay Cohen in 2014, and her research has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Political Geography, and International Studies Quarterly. Her research is and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Norwegian Research Council, and the Folke Bernadotte Academy, among others. Ragnhild Nordås was recently awarded a Young Research Talent grant from the Norwegian Research Council for a project on Dynamics of Conflict-related Sexual Violence (2016-2020).

Fields of Study:

• World Politics/International Relations
• Comparative Politics
• Peace and Conflict Studies