Robert Muggah creates tools to understand cycles of violence in urban environments and opens dialogues on ways to confront them globally.

Why you should listen

Robert Muggah drills down through shadowy data on arms trafficking, urban violence and resilience in search of answers for a rapidly urbanizing society’s most troubling questions: Why are cities so violent, and increasingly fragile? Why are conflicts within nations replacing conflicts between them? And what strategies can we implement to reduce violence?

Muggah's high-tech toolkit includes new ways for citizens to collect, collate and understand data, such as the mapping arms data (MAD) tool. As the research director of the Igarapé Institute and the SecDev Foundation, he developed the tool in collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo and with Google Ideas, winning accolades for the transparency it brings to the debate.

What others say

“Megacities are going to influence norms, processes and revolutionize governance at a scale hitherto unimagined.” — ISN, 2013

Robert Muggah’s TED talks

More news and ideas from Robert Muggah

TEDGlobalNYC

Future visions: The talks of TEDGlobalNYC

September 21, 2017

The advance toward a more connected, united, compassionate world is in peril. Some voices are demanding a retreat, back to a world where insular nations battle for their own interests. But most of the big problems we face are collective in nature and global in scope. What can we do, together, about it? In a […]

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