Prakash Bhattarai is currently Executive Director of Centre for Social Change (CSC), a non-profit research and advocacy institute founded by a group of Nepali scholars and practitioners actively involved in various professional fields. He is also a researcher of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a disaggregated conflict analysis and crisis mapping project.

Prakash holds a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and master’s degrees in Population Studies (Tribhuvan University, Nepal) and in International Peace Studies (University of Notre Dame, USA). He has been a visiting research scholar (April-June 2013) at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Sweden and at Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), Germany (May-June 2017). He has published articles in peer reviewed journals such as International Negotiation, International Journal of Conflict Management and Journal of Peacebuilding and Development.

Prakash has more than 15 years of professional and leadership experience on issues surrounding governance, peacebuilding, development, migration, and youth, and has taken leadership roles at Youth Action Nepal, Association of Youth Organizations in Nepal, and Collective Campaign for Peace. He led and coordinated advocacy initiatives, working closely with political parties, youth and student organizations, civil society organizations, media, donor agencies, and international organizations. Over the past few years, he has worked as research and evaluation consultant for peacebuilding, security, violence prevention, community mediation, youth, gender, migration, and resilience related projects with various organizations in Nepal and abroad including United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International Organization for Migration (IOM), Action Against Hunger, Save the Children International, Dan Church Aid (DCA), SaferWorld, Search for Common Ground (SFCG), Catholic Relief Services, The Asia Foundation (TAF), and Alliance for Peace Nepal.

Prakash’s research focused on the subject of “Status of Nepali Diaspora Population Living in Hong Kong”.