index.html.en - index.html.en

Personal and Professional

Rina Malagayo Alluri is Assistant Professor and Head of the Unit for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Innsbruck. She is also the Head of the Research Centre InnPeace. 

Born in Mumbai, India to Indian and Filipino parents, raised in Nigeria and migrated to Vancouver, BC, Canada, Rina has lived and worked in different countries and has been calling Austria home since 2018.

Rina carried out post-doctoral research at the Human Geography Department of the University of Zurich, Switzerland (2017-2019). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Basel, Switzerland (2014), a Masters in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Netherlands (2006) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada (2004).

Professionally, Rina has worked in a number of research and practitioner positions related to peacebuilding in different contexts such as Canada, South Africa, UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Prior to joining the University of Innsbruck, she worked as an independent Peacebuilding Consultant (2015-2020) where she supported the evaluation of a business and human rights organization based in London, carried out a mid-term evaluation by the Swiss Federal Parliament for the three Geneva-based peace centres and developed creative tools and processes to support the strategic development of a non-profit children’s foundation in Nepal. She also worked as a Lecturer for a MA/PhD Seminar (2015-2016) at the University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.

Previously, she worked as Ad Interim Head (2014-2015) and Program Officer (2008-2014) of the Business and Peace Program at swisspeace in Bern, Switzerland where she led projects on different topics such as: Business and Peace; Conflict Sensitivity; Natural Resource Conflicts; War Economies. In addition, she taught block courses and facilitated trainings and roundtable discussions on issues such as: Business, Conflict and Peace; Economic Actors in the Peace Process in Myanmar; War Economy in Syria; Human Rights and Conflict Transformation. Prior to joining swisspeace, she also worked with Hivos-ISS in the Hague, Netherlands and Cape Town, South Africa (2006), Fahamu: Networks for Social Justice in Oxford, UK and Durban, South Africa (2004-2005) and the Conflict and Development Programme at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC in Vancouver, BC, Canada (2003-2004).

Rina has spent her career working in and on conflict-contexts in Asia and Africa as these regions are representative of her own mixed identity and personal and professional journeys. She holds experience in contexts such as: Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nepal, Ethiopia and Rwanda. 

Currently, she is a Fellow with the Salzburg Global Seminar Asia Peace Innovator's Forum (APIF) and a member of the Salzburg Global Seminar Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Advisory Group. She is also a co-founder of the BIPOC Circle, an initiative that brings together Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) to engage in community on social and political issues.