Faculty at School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Atul Mishra

Atul Mishra

Associate Professor and Head of Department

School of Humanities and Social Sciences


Contact Information

My areas of competence in terms of academic research, teaching, and public affairs commentary are international theory, modern Indian international thought, Indian foreign policy, and contemporary international affairs. 

My scholarship is often in conversation with realism, liberalism and postcolonialism in both their political and international theory variants. I have closely followed the emergence of modern international relations theory, and I keep abreast of contemporary developments in the field. I am also interested in international theory traditions in the non-West, and while sceptical of claims around national schools of theory, I am interested in the sociology of how national constructs shape theory and theorizing. I have published works around notions of territoriality and sovereignty that have emerged from this interest. A related interest is in international political theory concerned with questions of order, justice, secularism, equity and democracy. 

As regards international thought, my first love is Indian international thought across the modern and contemporary periods. A part of this interest has translated into works on Indian visions of regional and international orders, and I am currently writing a book that examines ideas of a South Asian polity articulated during the first-half of the 20th century. I’m also fascinated by the notions of warfare and conquest found in pre-modern Indian thought.

My interest in Indian foreign policy pertains to the contemporary period, wherein the linkages between domestic politics and foreign policy and India’s response to shifting terrains of geopolitics are primary interests.

Finally, I take interest in both historical and contemporary international affairs. The historical part is mostly concerned with the geopolitical dynamics found on the subcontinent, particularly during the political transition of the 18th century and the emergence of the regional subsystem. In contemporary international affairs, I keenly follow the geopolitics and ideological contestation involving the West and the non-West. 

Methodologically, I am sympathetic to the Weberian conception of social science. 

I am the author (with Rajesh Rajagopalan) of Nuclear South Asia: Keywords and Concepts (Oxon and New Delhi: Routledge, 2014) and of The Sovereign Lives of India and Pakistan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2021). My papers have been published in International Affairs, India Review, The Economic and Political Weekly, Studies in Indian Politics, International Studies, South Asian Survey, and Strategic Analysis. I regularly lecture at the Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. I have written commentaries for The Hindu, The Indian Express, and Dawn among others, and I am currently a columnist for The Hindustan Times.

I am open to supervising doctoral projects that align with my areas of research and interest, particularly international thought and theory.

  • 2013, Ph.D., Jawaharlal Nehru University
  • 2008, M.Phil., Jawaharlal Nehru University
  • 2006, M.A., Jawaharlal Nehru University
  • 2004, B.A., Mumbai University

  • 07/18-Present

Associate Professor, International Relations and Governance Studies in School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR

  • 07/17-07/18

Assistant Professor, Shiv Nadar University

  • 08/10-06/17

Assistant Professor, Central University of Gujarat

  1. ‘Locusts vs. the gigantic octopus: the Hindutva international and “Akhand Bharat” in V.D. Savarkar’s history of India’, India Review, vol. 21, no.4-5, 2022, pp. 512-545. https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2131121
  2. ‘How to decentre Aberystwyth and tell a critical, multilocational IR story’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 34, no. 6, 2021, pp. 882-887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2021.1994321
  3. ‘What Does the International Mean? IR’s Deep Ontology and the Promise it Holds’, Studies in Indian Politics, vol.4, no.2, 2016, pp.233-240. https://doi.org/10.1177/2321023016665534

Books

  1. The Sovereign Lives of India and Pakistan: Post-Partition Statehood in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2021. ISBN: 9780190130879
  2. Co-authored with Rajesh Rajagopalan. Nuclear South Asia: Keywords and Concepts, New Delhi and Oxford: Routledge, 2014. ISBN 9780367176907

Book chapter

  1. ‘Perils of Ideological Maximalism’, in P.R. Kumaraswamy (ed.) Facets of India’s Security: Essays for C. Uday Bhaskar, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2021, pp. 34-50. eBook ISBN: 9781003200291

  • Co-authored with Jason Miklian. ‘The Evolving Domestic Drivers of India’s Foreign Policy’, NOREF Report, Oslo: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, January 2016.

  • ‘Lessons for India from Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit’, The Hindustan Times, 9 August 2022.
  • ‘Domestic issues: India must handle on its own’, The Hindustan Times, 9 June 2022.
  • ‘Ukraine: the state of play after invasion’, The Hindustan Times, 28 February 2022.
  • ‘Ukraine: the West’s power has its limits’, The Hindustan Times, 1 February 2022.  
  • ‘75 years later, the quest to understand partition’, The Hindustan Times, 5 December 2021.
  • ‘In South Asia, the politics of religious extremism’, The Hindustan Times, 4 November 2021.
  • ‘AUKUS won’t derail either Quad or Western unity’, The Hindustan Times, 29 September 2021.
  • ‘Kabul may signal the revival of the West’, The Hindustan Times, 27 August 2021.
  • ‘Liberal democracies must stand up’, The Hindustan Times, 28 July 2021.
  • ‘India’s PACK challenge needs a political response’, The Hindustan Times, 11 June 2021.
  • ‘Korona sankatatoon saamaaji parivartan shakya aahe ka?’, The Wire Marathi, 3 June 2021.
  • ‘Kya Covid mahamaari ko samaajik badlaav laaney ke mauqe ke taur pe dekha ja sakta hai’, The Wire Hindi, 23 May 2021.
  • ‘India’s real foreign policy challenge is domestic’, The Hindustan Times, 12 May 2021.
  • ‘Assessing India’s counter to ‘diminishing democracy’, The Hindu, 25 March 2021.
  • ‘Dangers of hard sovereignty’, The Hindu, 10 February 2021.
  • ‘Only through the prism of science’, The Hindu, 4 April 2020.
  • ‘The lessons from Brexit’, The Indian Express, 22 January 2019.
  • ‘When the military fights with democracy’, thREAD (The Hindu blog), 17 September 2018.  
  • ‘Sir Syed’s Old World’, Café Dissensus, 4 November 2017.
  • ‘Concrete boxes that won’t cave’, thREAD (The Hindu blog), 20 January 2016.
  • ‘A nation in a chrysalis’, thREAD (The Hindu blog), 26 October 2015. 

  • ‘Indian Conceptions of International Order, c. 2001-2022’. Presentation made at the first author’s workshop on a project titled Asian Conceptions and Practices of International Order, National University of Singapore, 29 April 2022. Online mode. Invited.
  • ‘IR Theories for Policy Making’, two invited lectures delivered to officers of the Indian Foreign Service, Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service, New Delhi, 4 April 2022.
  • ‘The “Great Anarchy of Hindustan”: late-colonial life of an international idea, 1880s-1940s’, International Studies Convention, Nashville, TN, 31 March 2022. Withdrawn due to inability to switch to the online mode.
  • Panellist on a special Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR event titled ‘Reflections on the Russia-Ukraine Crisis’, 25 March 2022, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
  • ‘The Sovereign Lives of India and Pakistan’, book talk, Carnegie India, New Delhi, 25 February 2022.
  • ‘Culture, Strategy, Democracy and Leadership: Four Themes in Contemporary Indian Foreign Policy’, Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. 6 December 2021. Online mode.
  • ‘Democratization in the Global Order’, Amity Institute of International Studies, Noida, India. 20 September 2021. Online mode.  
  • ‘Negotiating Uncertainty: A Profile of India’s Regional Political Challenges’, Department of Political Science, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Evening College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India. 16 September 2021. Online mode.
  • Participant in a Roundtable on ‘South Asia: Imposed Categories and Imposing Powers’, NIICE International Studies Convention, 28 August 2021. Online mode.
  • ‘The Difficulty of Dialogue in International Relations’, invited talk delivered to participants of the Certificate Course in Dialogue Studies, Indialogue Foundation and Gandhi Smriti Darshan Samiti’, 28 November 2020. Online mode.
  • ‘Nation and Nationalism in the Contemporary Period’, Prof. A.B. Shah Memorial Lecture delivered for the Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune. 19 September 2020. Online mode.
  • “‘United States of India’: The Regionalist Alternatives to South Asia’s Partition”, paper presented at an international conference on ‘Institutional Legacies of India’s Internationalist Thought and Practice, 1919-2019’, Ashoka University, 31 January 2020.
  • ‘Of Locusts vs. the Gigantic Octopus: The Hindutva International in V.D. Savarkar’s ‘Historical’ Thought’, paper presented at the Research Colloquium of the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, Shiv Nadar University, 22 November 2019.
  • ‘Taking Historical Consciousness Seriously’, paper presented at an international workshop titled ‘Postcolonial IR: Engaging With Public History in South Asia and Beyond’, Department of International Relations, South Asian University, New Delhi, 18 March 2019.
  • ‘The Federation Proposals of Late-Colonial South Asia: Notes from a Preliminary Survey’, talk delivered at the Department of International Relations, Ashoka University, Sonepat, 16 November 2018.  
  • ‘Essentials of Academic Writing in the Social Sciences’, talk delivered at the Department of Political Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, 24 November 2018.
  • ‘Understanding Power in Contemporary International Relations’, presentation made at SNU-CENJOWS joint seminar on Comprehensive National Power, New Delhi, 12 November 2018.
  • ‘Federal Alternatives to Interstate Relations: The Question of Political Form in Late-Colonial South Asia’, paper presented at the Department of International Relations, South Asian University, New Delhi, 28 September 2017.
  • ‘India’s Realistic Regionalisms in its Asian Ambitions’, at a seminar titled ‘Regionalism in International Relations: Contours and Trends’, Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 14 March 2017.
  • ‘From ‘Nonalignment’ to the ‘Modi Doctrine’: The Indian Worldview in Transformation’, FLAME University, Pune, 14 October 2016.   
  • ‘Soft Power: A Critical Constructivist Exposition’, at a conference titled ‘The Many Forms of Soft Power: India and the World’, IIAS, Simla, 14 September 2015.
  • ‘Nuclearization and Indian IR Debates’, at the Author’s Workshop of an ICSSR-funded project titled ‘Nuclearization of South Asia: Implications for India’s National Security’, JNU, New Delhi, 27 March 2015.