Henrik Urdal (PhD, Political Science) is the Director and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). He is the past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Peace Research and a former Research Fellow with the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School (2011-2012). Urdal’s work on political demography has been published in leading international academic journals. He has been a consultant for international organizations like the World Bank, the United Nations, and USAID. Urdal was part of a PRIO team producing one of the key background research papers for the World Bank/UNDP report Pathways for Peace. His research focuses on the impact of population and environmental change on armed conflict, including the security implications of urbanization, ‘youth bulges’, and climate change. He has worked extensively on global trends in armed conflict as the past Director of the Conflict Trends project, a long-term collaborative effort between PRIO and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.