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SOUTH ASIAN UNIVERSITY

A University Established by SAARC Nations

SOUTH ASIAN UNIVERSITY

A University established by SAARC Nations

Sanjay Chaturvedi

Professor & Dean - Faculty of International Studies (FIS) | Director ISAS | Vice President
PhD (Panjab University, Chandigarh, 1989)

Contact Details

sanjaychaturvedi(at)sau.int
South Asian University ,Rajpur Rd, Maidan Garhi, New Delhi, Delhi 110068
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Profile

 Dr. Sanjay Chaturvedi currently serves the South Asian University (A University Established by SAARC Nations), New Delhi, as the Senior   Vice President, Dean of the Faculty of International Studies and the Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS). He was Lala   Lajpat Rai Chair Professor in Political Science at Panjab University, Chandigarh, before joining South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi, as a   Professor in International Relations in June 2018.

 During the early 1990s, he pursued post-doctoral research on ‘Polar Regions in International Relations’ at the University of Cambridge,   England, with a Nehru Centenary British Commonwealth Fellowship. This was followed by the award of a Leverhulme Research Grant at   the University of Cambridge, where he was employed as a Research Associate to work on the research project, ‘The Future of the Antarctic   Treaty System and its Relevance for the Arctic’, at the Scott Polar Research Institute, from 1993 to 1995. A significant output of his research   stint at Cambridge, which also involved lecturing to M.Phil. in Polar Studies, was The Polar Regions: A Political Geography (Chichester: John   Wiley, 1996), which remains widely cited.

He is the President of the Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG), an Observer in the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and Chief Editor of  its flagship journal, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region (Routledge). He serves/has served on editorial boards of several journals  including  Geopolitics (Routledge); Political Geography (Elsevier), Cooperation and Conflict (Sage), Journal of Borderland Studies (Routledge), Strategic Analysis (Routledge), The Polar Journal (Routledge, as a Regional Editor)  India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs (Sage), Indian Foreign Affairs Journal: A Quarterly of the Association of Indian Diplomats (Prints Publication),  Journal of Global Faultlines (Pluto) and Journal of Land Ports and Border Economy (Sage).

He has authored two, co-authored three and co-edited eight books under the imprint of Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, Routledge, John Wiley and Sage. Elected as the co-chair of the Research Committee on Political and Cultural Geography (RC 15) of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) for two terms (2006-2009; 2009-2012), he also served on the Steering Committee of the IGU Commission on Political Geography from 2004 to 2012. He has served as a member of the Indian delegation to several Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCMS): 44th ATCM (Berlin, 2022); 43rd ATCM (Paris, 2021); 38th ATCM (Sofia, 2015); 34th ATCM (Buenos Aires); 33rd ATCM (Punta del Este); 32nd ATCM (Baltimore); 31st ATCM (Kyiv); and 30th ATCM (New Delhi, 2007).

He has visited 51 countries in connection with various academic assignments. He is the recipient of several visiting professorships and fellowships abroad including Curtin University, Australia; University of Wurzburg, Germany under ‘A New Passage to India’ of DAAD; India-China Institute, The New School, USA; The University of Adelaide, Australia; University of Durham, UK; and ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.

He also speaks/has spoken at the National Defence College, New Delhi; Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service, New Delhi; George C. Marshall European Centre for Security Studies, Germany; National Defence College, Sultanate of Oman, Muscat; and the Theresian Military Academy, Wiener Neustadt, Austria.

He was the Lead Author for Chapter 10: (Asia) of the Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2019-2021). 

Qualifications

  • B.A. (Himachal Pradesh University) 1979 [Second in University Merit List]
  • M.A. in Political Science (Panjab University) 1981 [First Division]
  • M.Phil. (Panjab University) 1983 [Distinction]
  • Ph.D. (Panjab University) 1989

Research Interests

  • Geopolitics and IR: Theories and Practices, especially about Polar Regions and the Indian Ocean Region
  • Critical Geopolitics and South Asia/Central Asia
  • Partition and Boundary Studies
  • Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change
  • Non-Western IR and Geo

Recent Publications


‘‘Securing’ Borders in Anthropocene Geopolitics: Perspectives On and From Border Villages in Punjab’ in Borders and Geopolitics, edited by Amena Mohsin & Niloy Biswas (Springer Nature, in press). 

‘Indian Ocean Rim Association: An Experiment in Grand Oceanic Regionalism’ in Handbook of Globalization Projects of Regional Organizations, edited by Jens Herpolsheimer, Ulf Engel and Frank Mattheis, (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, in press). 

  ‘Adaptation Governance’ in Rajib Shaw (ed.) Handbook on Climate Change and Disasters (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2022): 183-198.

‘Anthropocene ‘Education’: Con(texts), Intersections and Contestations’ in Imtiaz Ahmed (ed.) Imagining Post-Covid Education Futures, (Centre for Genocide Studies, University of Dhaka & Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2022).

“Maritime Regionalism and ‘Inclusive Development’: Opportunities and Challenges before Bangladesh in Anthropocene’, Journal of International Relations (University of Dhaka), Special Issue on Bangladesh and the World: Achievements and Futures, 15 (1 & 2), 2022: 159-184. (Best Paper Award)

South Asia: Boundaries, Borders and Beyond, New Delhi: Routledge (co-edited with Dhananjay Tripathi), 2021.

‘The Asian factor in ‘Arctic connectivity’: ecology, geopolitics and the social’ in Chih Y. Yoon and Klaus Dodds ‘Observing’ the Arctic: Asia in the Arctic Council and Beyond (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2020) pp. 82-102. 

‘Estranged Democracies in the Geopolitics of Shifting Alliances in the Indo-Pacific: Perspectives From and On India’ in Bart Gaens and Ville Sinkkonen (eds.) Great Power Competition and Rising US-China Rivalry, Finnish Insitute of International Affairs (FIIA), September 2020: 115-146.

Recent Books / Handbooks

  1. Routledge Handbook of Geopolitics of Indo-Pacific (Routledge), co-edited with Gurpreet Goraya (contract signed, work in progress)
  2. South Asia: Boundaries, Borders and Beyond, New Delhi: Routledge (co-edited with Dhananjay Tripathi), 2021.
  3. Climate Terror: A Critical Geopolitics of Climate Change, New York: Palgrave Macmillan (co-authored with Timothy Doyle), 2015.

       (Reviewed in Geopolitics, Progress in Human Geography, Social Movement Studies: Journal of  Social, Cultural and Political Protests, Capital &          Class, India Quarterly: A Journal of International  Affairs, Space and Polity, The Wire)

  1. Climate Change and the Bay of Bengal: Emerging Geographies of Fear and Hope, Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute & New Delhi: Pentagon Press (co-authored with Vijay Sakhuja) 2015.

      (Reviewed in Political Geography, Asian Journal of Public Affairs, Asian Journal of Social Science)

  1. Environmental Sustainability from Himalaya to the Ocean: Struggles and Innovations in China and India, Springer (co-edited with Shikui Dong and Jayanta Bandyopadhyay), 2017.

        (Reviewed in Economic and Political Weekly, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, The Third Pole, The Wire)

  1. Geopolitical Orientations, Regionalism and Security in the Indian Ocean, London: Routledge Revivals (co-edited with Dennis Rumley) 2015.
  2. Energy Security and the Indian Ocean Region, London: Routledge Revivals (co-edited with Dennis Rumley) 2015.
  3. Security of the Sea Lanes of Communication in the Indian Ocean Region, London: Routledge Revivals (co-edited with Dennis Rumley) 2015.
  4. Euro-Asia at Crossroads: Geopolitics, Identity and Discourse, New Delhi: Shipra Publications (co-edited with Jyrki Kakonen and Anita Sengupta) 2011.
  5. Fisheries Exploitation in the Indian Ocean Region: Threats and Opportunities, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, (co-edited with Dennis Rumley and Vijay Sakhuja) 2009.
  6. State of Justice in India: Marginalities and Justice, New Delhi: Sage (co-edited with Paula Banerjee) 2009.
  7. Partitions: Reshaping Minds and States, London, Frank Cass/Routledge Series in Geopolitics, (co-authored with Stefano Bianchini, Rada Ivekovich, and Ranabir Samaddar) 2005.
  8. Globalization: Spaces, Identities and Insecurities, New Delhi: South Asian Publishers (co- edited with Jyrki Kakonen) 2004.
  9. India in Antarctica: Geopolitical and Scientific Perspectives, New Delhi: South Asian Publishers (co-edited with P. C. Pandey and N. Khare) 2004.
  10. The Polar Regions: A Political Geography, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.

       (Reviewed in Polar Record, Choice: Current Review for Academic Libraries, The Geographical Journal, Political Geography, Progress in Human             Geography, International Affairs, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Geography, British East-West Journal, WWF Arctic Bulletin, The Telegraph       (Kolkata,18 December 1997 by Professor Barun De)

  1. Dawning of Antarctica: A Geopolitical Analysis, New Delhi: Segment, 1990. (Reviewed in Polar Record)

Awards & Honours

  • Guest Professor, Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Würzburg, Germany, 12 June to 11 July 2016 (Under New Passage to India, DAAD).
  • Eminent Visiting Fellow in Indian Ocean Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University, Perth, Australia, 10 October to 28 October, 2015.
  • Guest Professor, Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Würzburg, Germany, 17 June to 17 July 2015 (Under New Passage to India, DAAD).
  • Visiting Fellow, Indo-Pacific Governance Research Centre, The University of Adelaide, Australia, 1 March-1 May 2013.
  • Fellow, India-China Institute, The New School, New York, USA: 2010-2012. (Research focus of the Third Cohort Fellowship Program: ‘Social Innovation and Sustainable Environments.’
  • Honorary Fellow, Asia Society, 2010-2015.
  • Visiting Professor, Environmental School, Beijing Normal University, China, 25 May to 25 June 2011.
  • Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Yusof Ishak Singapore, 2010-12 (Research Project: Climate Change and the Bay of Bengal).
  • Visiting Fellow, Department of Geography and Van Mildert College, University of Durham, UK, April-June 2006.
  • Distinguished Visitor, Department of Politics and Government & Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (Distinguished Visitors Programme) 29 December 2002 to 3 January 2003.
  • Fellowship, Columbia University Institute for Scholars, Reid Hall, and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, France, under International Programme of Advanced Studies (IPAS), 10th November 2001 to 1 February 2002.
  • Parsons Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, Australia, 6-14 May 2001.
  • Visiting Fellow (South Asia Visiting Fellows Program), Henry L. Stimson Centre, Washington D.C., USA, June-July, 2000.
  • Visiting Scholar, University of Lapland and University of Joensuu,Finland (UGC Nomination under Indo-Finland Cultural Exchange Program), September 1999.

Last Updated : 21 May 2025