About
Avantika Singh is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Her research examines the spatial and structural dimensions of violence, focusing on how the built environment, political institutions, and social hierarchies shape patterns of harm. She uses mixed‑method approaches to study how violence is organized, experienced, and resisted across diverse political contexts.
Avantika has worked across India, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Germany, France, Switzerland, and the United States as a human rights researcher and practitioner. She previously served as Project Lead for the Perceived Mass Atrocities Dataset Project at the Pardee Institute for International Futures. At the Sié Chéou‑Kang Center, she supported The Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative and feminist peacebuilding initiatives.
Her research draws on years of field and policy work. At Forum-Asia, she monitored human rights across seven South Asian countries and documented the Taliban's 2021 takeover of Afghanistan. At the UN-IOM in Papua New Guinea, she helped develop the country strategy for 2023-27, coordinated a handbook supporting the transition of immigrants and refugees, and advised mission leadership on national and regional migration policy. As a ThinkSwiss Fellow at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, in 2019, she examined the socio-political and psychological drivers of armed group identification during the Bosnian civil war and the use of surveillance and spyware technologies in occupied territories.
