Varun Sahni

Varun Sahni is trained as a Latin Americanist and has spent most of his academic career teaching theories of International Relations. An Inlaks Scholar, he wrote his doctoral thesis on the political role of the Argentine Navy at the University of Oxford (1991). Varun was for three decades Professor in International Politics (earlier Associate Professor) at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Before joining the JNU faculty in 1995, Varun Sahni was Junior Research Fellow in Politics and Junior Dean at Lincoln College, Oxford; Resident Fellow of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, New Delhi; and Reader in Latin American Politics at Goa University. Varun has been visiting professor/fellow at the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA (1997); Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico City, Mexico (1997-99); National Defense University, Washington, DC, USA (2003, under the Fulbright Military Academies Initiative); and the Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (2008).

Varun has been “Personnalité d’Avenir” at the French Foreign Ministry (1995) and was a Member of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (1999-2002). He serves/has served on the editorial boards of The Chinese Journal of International Politics (Oxford University Press), Asian Security Series, Stanford University Press, and Contemporary Politics (Taylor & Francis). For his “outstanding contribution to research and teaching”, he was conferred the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize in Social Sciences for 2006 by the Indian Council of Social Science Research. He has been a Jury Member of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding. Professor Sahni has served as the 10th Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jammu (2008-12) and 8th Vice-Chancellor of Goa University (2016-21). He is an Honorary Colonel in the National Cadet Corps.

Varun Sahni researches and writes on nuclear deterrence, regional security, emerging balances in the Indo-Pacific, evolving security concepts, emerging powers, Latin American issues, foreign policy, maritime geopolitics, and river waters. His 102 research articles and book chapters have been published in Current History, Contemporary South Asia, South African Journal of International Affairs, Relações Internacionais (Portugal) and Journal of Latin American Studies, amongst others. He is fluent in Hindi, English and Spanish. A qualified Open Water Diver, he has logged 78 dives in the Caribbean, Eastern Pacific and Gulf of Thailand. He regards speaking annually at National Defence College (NDC), New Delhi for two continuous decades with a pandemic break (2006-19, 2022-25) as one of his most meaningful professional tasks.