Research focus

Peace and conflict research

I study how conflicts escalate and persist—across insurgencies, communal tensions, and online environments— with an emphasis on emotion, geography, and causal inference.

My work combines field-based evidence (e.g., panel surveys), computational approaches, and spatial statistics. The aim is generating objective insights without losing sight of the human costs of violence.

emotions & fear intergroup conflict spatial methods social media & offline violence migration & displacement

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Research overview, selected publications, projects, CV, and software.

Research Publications Download CV (PDF) Updates Software

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Key papers (with short summaries)

These are representative pieces; the full list is on the publications page.

Fear and intergroup conflict

Panel survey evidence from India on how fear can shift attitudes and increase support for escalation.

What the paper does

Links individual-level fear to downstream intergroup attitudes and behavioral intentions.
Uses repeated measurement to separate stable differences from within-person change.
Focuses on careful inference over dramatic claims.

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Online speech and communal conflict: Evidence from India

Examines how online speech on an Indian platform precedes and relates to offline communal violence.

What the paper does

Data collection of 22 million posts from an Indian social media network.
Time-series analysis correlating speech with offline communal violence.
Finds that both divisive and conciliatory speech have real-world effects in India.

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False inference in spatial event studies

Monte Carlo evidence on how common spatial setups can generate false positives—and how to diagnose them.

What the paper does

Uses simulation to stress-test popular inference strategies for conflict event data.
Clarifies which assumptions are doing the work (and when they break).
Motivates practical checks and better defaults for applied researchers.

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Research

What I work on

Three threads: micro-foundations of conflict, environmental drivers of displacement, and methodological innovation.

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Software

Tools I build

Reusable methods for spatiotemporal event data and simulation-based benchmarking.

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News & notes

Short updates on ongoing projects and recent work.

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