Dr. Suranjan Weeraratne
Project Co-leader
Dr. Suranjan Weeraratne is the project co-leader for REVERSE. He is a Professor of Political Science at SIUE. His scholarly research focuses on several areas of international and domestic security including terrorism, ethnic violence, and religious riots and he has published multiple articles in several journals specializing in terrorism such as Terrorism and Political Violence, Journal of Global Security Studies and the Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict. Some of his recent work has explored linkages between transnational terrorist organizations and local militant groups and assessed under what conditions various terrorist organizations resort to specific tactics such as suicide bombings and kidnappings. Before joining SIUE, Weeraratne was employed as a consultant at the World Bank in Washington DC for two years where he worked on issues of political violence in the developing world and was a key member of the team that compiled the 2012 World Development Report on conflict and fragility.
While much of his earlier work centered on political violence in Africa and parts of Asia, he has recently focused on addressing targeted violence and domestic terrorism in the United States, Along with Dr. Rice, he has secured over $800,000 in grant funding to enhance local capacity to combat radicalization to violence in the United States. He and his co-authors, Dr. Rice and Dr. Moffett, have multiple current working papers that examine the efficacy of interventions in reducing support for political violence and the effect of specific risk factors and protective factors in increasing/decreasing support for violence.
