Dr. Christoph Trinn

Dr. Christoph Trinn is an academic staff member at the Institute of Political Science at Heidelberg University. His research focuses on conflict and protest studies, regime and institutional research, the study of complex systems, and political anthropology. His regional expertise covers Western Europe and North America, as well as South, East, and Southeast Asia. His current research projects address mass protests and riots, collective emotions, trigger events and nonlinear dynamics, questions of autonomy and secession, and processes of state formation and constitutionalism.

Christoph Trinn studied History and Philosophy in London, and Political Science, Comparative Religious Studies, Public Law, and English Linguistics in Heidelberg, completing his studies with a Magister Artium degree in October 2007. He received his PhD in October 2014. From 2007 to 2008, he worked as a research associate on a Bertelsmann Foundation project on “Cultural Conflicts.” Since February 2008, he has been an academic staff member at the Institute of Political Science at Heidelberg University. In the first half of 2019, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame du Lac in South Bend, Indiana (USA), and at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. He is the coordinator for the South Asia region for the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI).

• Schulte, F., and Trinn, C. 2025: The Magnitude of Triggering Events and the Nonlinear Dynamics of Ethnic and Religious Upheavals, in: Conflict Resolution Quarterly 43: 41–59 (doi.org/10.1002/crq.21478).
• Schulte, F., and Trinn, C. 2024: Collective Emotions, Triggering Events, and Self-Organization: The Forest-Fire Model of Cultural Identity Conflict Escalation, in: Aggression and Violent Behavior 78 (doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2024.101954).
• Lott, L., Croissant, A., and Trinn, C. 2023: The Ambivalent Effect of Autocratization on Domestic Terrorism, in: Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2023.2270479).
• Trinn, C., and Naumann, L. 2023. Guns and Lightning: Power Law Distributions in Intrastate Conflict Intensity Dynamics. Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4): 373–397 (doi.org/10.1177/07388942221092126).
• Schulte, F., and Trinn, C. 2022. Self-Rule and Intrastate Conflict Risk in Divided Societies: A Configurational Analysis of Consociational Institutions. Swiss Political Science Review 28: 3: 413–432 (doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12514).
• Trinn, C., and Schulte, F. 2022. Untangling Territorial Self-Governance: New Typology and Data. Regional & Federal Studies 32(1):1–25 (doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2020.1795837).
• Trinn, C., and Wencker, T. 2021. Integrating the Quantitative Research on the Onset and Incidence of Violent Intrastate Conflicts. International Studies Review 23: 115–139 (doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaa023).
• Trinn, C. 2018. Criticality, Entropy and Conflict. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 35(6): 746–758 (doi.org/10.1002/sres.2516).
• Trinn, C. 2015. Konflikt und Komplexität: Die Intensität innerstaatlicher Gewaltkonflikte in systemtheoretischer Perspektive. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
• Croissant, A., Wagschal, U., Schwank, N., and Trinn, C. 2009. Kulturelle Konflikte seit 1945: Die kulturelle Dimension des globalen Konfliktgeschehens. Baden-Baden: Nomos.