Rina Malagayo Alluri is Assistant Professor and UNESCO Chair in Peace Studies at the Unit for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Innsbruck. Her tenure project (Habilitation) focuses on the decolonization of peace and conflict studies.
Rina is a transnational migrant who has lived and worked on different continents and has been calling Austria home since 2018. Geographically speaking, Rina Alluri calls no fewer than four continents home. She was born in Mumbai, India — her father’s country of origin. She spent her childhood first in Nigeria, later in Canada. For a time, she lived in Switzerland; today she resides in Salzburg and teaches and conducts research in Innsbruck.
For the peace and conflict researcher, the notion of “home” has little to do with countries or nations. “Home, for me, is above all where my partner and my children are,” she says. “But I also feel at home in Canada, and in the Philippines, my mother’s homeland — and even in France, where I just visited family.” Rina Alluri conducted postdoctoral research on the transnationalism of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora at the University of Zurich (2017–2019). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Basel (2010–2014), an MA in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands (2006), and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia, Canada (2004).
Before joining the University of Innsbruck, she worked as an independent peacebuilding consultant (2015–2020), evaluating peace and human rights organizations in the UK and Switzerland, and supporting a children’s foundation in Nepal. She previously served at swisspeace as Program Officer (2008–2014) and Acting Head of the Business and Peace Program (2014–2015), leading dialogue processes, teaching, and conducting research in Myanmar, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. Rina is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Asia Peace Innovators Forum and a member of the Salzburg Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Advisory Group. She co-founded the BIPOC Circle, a network engaging in social and political issues, and serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Georg Arnhold Program for Peace Education and Sustainable Development.
Photo © Stefan Hohenwarter
