In political anthropology, Rubinstein’s work focuses on cross-cultural aspects of conflict and dispute resolution, including negotiation, mediation and consensus building. He is an originator of the field of the anthropology of peacekeeping. Since 1985, he has conducted empirical research and policy studies in this field. He examines the ways that the success of peace operations depends upon cultural considerations, and how organizational and institutional cultures can facilitate or frustrate coordination in peace operations. Rubinstein has collaborated on policy applications of his work with the International Peace Academy, the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and the United States Army Peacekeeping Institute.

As a medical anthropologist, Rubinstein focuses on conflict and health, disparities in access to health care and the implications of those disparities for the health of populations, and on the integration of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. He has developed community-based health interventions in Egypt and Atlanta. Rubinstein has collaborated on health policy issues with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Carter Center, the Georgia Department of Physical Health, and the Onondaga County Health Department.

Rubinstein’s work has been supported by grants from more than 20 foundations and agencies and he has published more than 100 articles in journals and books. He is the former director of The Maxwell School’s Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (now renamed the ).

His work has been recognized by the American Public Health Association with the , and the American Anthropological Association awarded him the for developing the anthropology of peace, security, and human rights.

Bhan has written a variety of books, including  , which examines the relationship between everyday forms of militarization and social life in Kashmir, with a focus on how state-based economic development and environmental interventions normalize everyday forms of violence through registers of care, compassion, and humanitarianism. In 2018, she co-authored  , which challenges the modernist binaries between nature and humanity, and offers a situated and place-based assessment on how human and nonhuman entanglements produce climatic assemblages across space and time.

With her colleagues from the Critical Kashmir Studies Collective that she helped co-found in 2013, she co-edited . Envisioned as a critical feminist collaboration among scholars who do engaged and advocacy work in Kashmir, the book foregrounds voices of Kashmiri scholars, and explores the social and legal logic of India’s occupation of Kashmir.

Professor Bhan is co-editor of the HIMALAYA, the flagship journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, and on the editorial board of AGITATE, published through the University of Minnesota Libraries. Her writings and interviews have appeared in several media and print outlets such as the BBC, Al Jazeera, TRT, Kindle, Open Democracy, and Outlook.

Before coming to Syracuse, Mona taught at DePauw for twelve years where she was the Otto L. Sonder Jr. Chair of Anthropology. Bhan received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Rutgers University.