Professor Kate Sullivan de Estrada
I originally joined the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme as a departmental lecturer in October 2010. In September 2017 I took up Oxford’s Associate Professorship in the International Relations of South Asia, a joint post between Area Studies and the Department of Politics and International Relations. I was Course Director for the MSc and MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies in 2018-19 and Director of CSASP from 2018-2021. I hold a Governing Body Fellowship at St Antony’s College.
My research centres on India’s identity and state behaviour as a rising power. My book, Rising India: Status and Power (2017), with Rajesh Basrur, looks at India’s status-seeking strategies in world politics since Independence. From 2013 to 2015 I led a collaborative research project that examined India’s rise from the perspective of a number of significant non-Western states, resulting in the edited volume Competing Visions of India in World Politics: India’s Rise beyond the West (2015). From 2015 to 2017 Manjari Chatterjee Miller and I developed an international research network focussing on India’s foreign policy under the post-2014 government, leading to our joint-editorship of the special issue of International Affairs, ‘India’s Rise at 70’ (January 2017). My research has been supported by the John Fell OUP Research Fund and the Vice Chancellor’s Returning Carer’s Fund.
Currently, I am working on a monograph that examines how rising powers navigate and negotiate socialisation pressures in order to retain distinctive elements of their identities. As an Associate Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, I am also collaborating with Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow for South Asia, on a broad-ranging and policy-relevant project on Indian Ocean security. More broadly, I am interested in South Asian nuclear politics, and India’s and Pakistan’s approaches to institutions of global governance.
Teaching and supervising are two of the most rewarding and illuminating aspects of my work. My DPhil students are working on topics such as Nehruvian critiques of International Relations theory, nuclear politics, and the sociology of the Indian Foreign Service. I convene the MSc/MPhil option The International Relations of South Asia, and co-convene the option India as a 'Great Power'. I also serve as Course Provider for the undergraduate PPE option The Politics of South Asia. I gained a Teaching Excellence Awards Project Grant in 2013 and was nominated by my students for an Oxford University Students Union Teaching Award in 2017.
I engage regularly with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and have appeared on an India-focused edition of BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week.
- International Relations
- Politics
- Diplomacy
- Rising powers, nuclear politics, diplomatic history, climate change, states in world politics, foreign policy
- India, South Asia
Books
- Rising India: Status and Power (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017) (with Rajesh Basrur)
- Competing Visions of India in World Politics: India's Rise Beyond the West (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) (edited volume)*
Edited Collections
- India in International Affairs, Virtual Issue, International Affairs, January 2017
- India: A Rising Power at 70, Special Issue, International Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 1, 2017 (with Manjari Chatterjee Miller)
Articles
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‘China’s and India’s search for international status through the UN system: competition and complementarity’, Contemporary Politics, DOI: 10.1080/13569775.2019.1621718, (with Rosemary Foot), 2019
- ‘India, the Indo-Pacific and the Quad’, Survival, Vol. 60, No. 3, pp. 181-194 (with Rahul Roy-Chaudhury), 2018
- ‘Between Conformity and Innovation: China’s and India’s Quest for Status as Responsible Nuclear Powers’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 482-503 (with Nicola Leveringhaus), 2018
- ‘Continuity and Change in Indian Grand Strategy: The Cases of Nuclear Non-proliferation and Climate Change’, India Review, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 33-64 (with Manjari Chatterjee Miller), 2018
- ‘India's Odyssey through International Affairs’, International Affairs, Virtual Issue, January 2017, doi: 10.1093/ia/iix026
- ‘Pragmatism in Indian Foreign Policy: How Ideas Constrain Modi’, International Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 1, 2017, pp. 27-49 (with Manjari Chatterjee Miller)
- ‘Introduction – India: a Rising Power at 70’, International Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 1 (2017), pp. 1-6, 2017 (with Manjari Chatterjee Miller)
- ‘Trustworthy Nuclear Sovereigns? India and Pakistan after the 1998 Tests’, Stosunki Międzynarodowe – International Relations, Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 289-306. (with Nicholas J. Wheeler)*
- ‘Exceptionalism in Indian Diplomacy: The Origins of India’s Moral Leadership Aspirations’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 4, 2014, pp. 640-655*
- ‘Discourses on the Nuclear Deal: Persistence of Independence’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIII, No. 3 (19-25 January, 2008), pp. 73-76*
Book Chapters
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‘Understanding India’s Exceptional Engagement with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Regime’, in: Johannes Plagemann, Sandra Destradi and Amrita Narlikar (eds), India Rising: Ideas, Interests and Institutions in Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), forthcoming.
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‘Chinese and Indian Competitive Nuclear Restraint in the Global Nuclear Order’, in: Kanti Bajpai, Manjari Miller and Selina Ho (eds), Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (Abingdon: Routledge) (with Nicola Leveringhaus), forthcoming.
- ‘India’s Ambivalent Projection of Self as a Global Power: Between Compliance and Resistance’, in: Kate Sullivan (ed.) Competing Visions of India in World Politics: India's Rise Beyond the West (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 15-33*
- ‘Introduction: Creating Diversity in Readings of India’s Global Role’, in: Kate Sullivan (ed.) Competing Visions of India in World Politics: India's Rise Beyond the West (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 1-14*
- ‘Democracy Promotion and the Problem of Peaceful Coexistence: Exploring the ‘Democratic Diplomacy’ of India’, in: Jyotirmaya Tripathy and Sudarsan Padmanabhan (eds.), Democracy and Cultural Diversity (London/New Delhi: Routledge, 2013), pp. 141-164*
Other Research Publications
- ‘Is India a Responsible Nuclear Power?’ Policy Report - S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (March 2014)*
Media/Online Publications
- ‘China’s Stance on NSG Membership Shows the Extent of India’s Challenge in the Global Nuclear Order’, The Wire, 30 June 2017 (with Nicola Leveringhaus)
- ‘The Myth of India’s Non-Aligned Boycott’, The Diplomat, 23 November 2016 (with Patrick Quinton-Brown)
- 'How Modi's Nuclear Agenda Matters for Mexico', The Diplomat, 8 June 2016 (with Gilberto Estrada Harris)
- ‘Rediscovering India - Review: Australia and India: Mapping the Journey 1944–2014, by Meg Gurry’, Inside Story, 15 September 2015*
- ‘How the World warmed to a Nuclear India’, Inside Story, 3 May 2012*
- ‘Waiting for the Panda’, The Indian Express, 11 June 2014 (with Nan Liu)*
- ‘Do not let Agni V’s shock and awe endanger Asian stability’, The Hindu, 23 April 2012, p.15*
- ‘India’s Toughest Contest’, Inside Story, 1 November 2009*
- ‘Testing times to gain top jobs in India’, The Canberra Times, 31 October 2009, Forum p.11*
- ‘Looking for Youngistan’, Inside Story, 14 April 2009. Republished in: Capturing the Year 2009: Writings from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, Canberra: ANU CAP, 2009*
NB: Asterisked publications appear under my former name, Kate Sullivan