Kulani Abendroth-Dias is a behavioral scientist interested in investigating the use and misuse of artificial intelligence and machine learning in international security. She has studied intergroup conflict, dangerous speech formation, disengagement strategies used to justify prejudiced beliefs and attitudes, contact, and interventions that can foster negotiation and reconciliation in conflict and post-conflict societies at Princeton University and Clark University USA, and at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences in Germany. She is partial to an interdisciplinary, data-driven, mixed methods approach and field research. She is a strong advocate for more collaboration between political scientists, economists, social psychologists, behavioral scientists, and policy makers.

Kulani was a behavioral science consultant for the United Nations Peacebuilding Secretariat in Sri Lanka. She previously also worked as a behavioral scientist for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and currently serves on LIRNEasia’s Disability Research Advisory Board where she informs research design practices.

Kulani is currently based in Brussels, Belgium where she is pursuing a second MSc. (Advanced Master) in European Integration specializing in European Economics and Security and Counter-Terrorism at the Institute for European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit. She specializes in the economics of the development of AI in Germany and its implementation in the Visegrad Four.

Kulani will be pursuing a PhD in International Relations/Political Science at the Graduate Institute Geneva in Switzerland from September 2020 onwards.

Kulani has experience in using behavioral science to influence behaviors in a variety of domains, from incentivizing green energy, designing non-competitive interventions for refugees and asylum seekers, and setting up a behaviorally-informed disaster relief coordination system.

Kulani received her Master's degree in Social Psychology from Princeton University in May 2016. She was the Web Coordinator for the Early Career Committee of the International Society for Political Psychology (ISPP) (2014 - 2015) and an Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Social and Political Psychology (JSPP) (2013 - 2016).