Kristian Berg Harpviken
Director
The Norwegian Nobel Institute
Kristian Berg Harpviken will serve as the Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and as secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, from 1 January 2025. He is currently a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and he was the institute’s Director from 2009-2017. Harpviken has devoted his entire career to the study of peace and conflict, and his research interests include peace processes, peacebuilding, the dynamics of civil war, regional security, as well as migration and transnationalism. He has been a visiting researcher at Chicago University and Georgetown University, and an associate at the University of York, the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and the Institute for National Security Studies Sri Lanka. Harpviken is the Director of the PRIO Middle East Centre, but is also known for his competence on Afghanistan and the surrounding region, and he has worked in Angola, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Mozambique, and Pakistan. In addition to experience from leadership positions at various levels, Harpviken has served on numerous boards, both in Norway and internationally, and is currently board chair at the Institute for Social Research and the Tim Greve Symposium. Harpviken is a frequently used media commentator, and lectures regularly to both academic and popular audiences. In addition to his scholarly articles and book chapters, Harpviken is also author of Social Networks and Migration in Afghanistan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and (with Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh), A Rock Between Hard Places: Afghanistan as an Arena for Regional Insecurity (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2016).