Biography

Dr. Swasti Rao is a geopolitical expert Commentator and Author. 

She is currently Non- Resident Fellow at Eastern Circles, Paris and a Contributor to The Print.  

She has worked at the prestigious Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses(MP-IDSA), India’s premier think tank under the aegis of Ministry of Defence. At MP-IDSA, Swasti had worked on projects for Ministry for External Affairs and Ministry of Defence on European geopolitics and geo-economics. Her research project at MP-IDSA has been on Conflicts in Europe amidst Shifting Power Structures and Europe’s Indo Pacific outreach.

Recognized as a "Geopolitical Expert" by the Government of Uttar Pradesh, India, for the G20 Summit in 2023, Dr. Rao was also honored as one of the under-40 Young Leaders by EICBI for substantiating India-Europe relations. She is affiliated with the EU-India Women’s Council and serves as a reviewer for the peer reviewed publications by National Maritime Foundation (NMF), India, and Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), London.

She is also a geopolitical advisor to the Uttar Pradesh Government on developing the “UP Defence Industrial Corridor” a  key undertaking of the Ministry of Defence, Govt. of India. 

An alumnus of JNU, India; Tsukuba University, Japan and Institut des hautes études de défense nationale(IHEDN), France; she is a recipient of the prestigious Japanese Education Ministry Fellowship (MEXT) in 2011 and the‘Okita Memorial Scholarship’ in 2010 from ICCR.

She qualified the University Grants Commission’s National Eligibility Test in International and Area Studies in 2007.

She has held an adjunct position at the Tokai University, Japan in the capacity of a foreign collaborator for the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS).

She is a widely published author. Her latest publications are with Routledge, World Scientific Publishers, Palgrave Macmillan and Pentagon Press.  Her work on the Ukraine war is soon to be compiled in a book, ‘Ukraine Untold’ by Harper Collins, India.

A regular commentator on IR across national and international media platforms, she writes a weekly expert's column that discusses key aspects of the geopolitical security from an Indian perspective. She has been representing India at the flagship EU Security Dialogue, The Schuman Forum, held at the European Parliament at Brussels since March 2023 among other international foras.

Swasti has also been an academic, teaching courses on International Politics, Conflict and research methodology at one of India’s largest and oldest central universities, Aligarh Muslim University. She has contributed to syllabus development for Political Science at IGNOU and collaborated with the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) on compiling resources for international relations and research methodology for higher education teachers.

She has hundreds of academic engagements at national and international conferences, workshops and panel discussions to her credit.

Beyond her scholarly work, Swasti is a trained Kathak artiste and an HRD Ministry, Govt. of India, scholar on Kathak and Performing Arts.

She is proficient in English, Hindi, Urdu and Japanese and is currently learning French.