Professor Kate Sullivan de Estrada
Associate Professor in the International Relations of South Asia
BA York, MA Heidelberg, PhD ANU
Kate Sullivan de Estrada’s research centres on an interest in India’s identity and state behaviour as a rising power. Her recent book, Rising India: Status and Power (2017), co-authored with Rajesh Basrur, advances the theoretical scholarship on status in world politics through an examination of India’s international status-seeking strategies since Independence.
Theoretically, her research centres on the ways in which rising powers navigate and negotiate socialisation pressures in order to retain distinctive elements of their identities, with a empirical focus on India’s engagement in non-proliferation, climate change and UN Security Council reform. In parallel, she is collaborating with Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, on the initial stages of a knowledge-exchange project that will map various alternative futures for maritime security cooperation in the Indian Ocean.
Kate engages regularly with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office through invited participation in advisory and ministerial meetings, writes for a range of digital and media outlets, and has appeared on an India-focused edition of BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week. Her research has been supported by the John Fell OUP Research Fund and the Vice Chancellor’s Returning Carer’s Fund. She was awarded a University of Oxford Teaching Excellence Awards Project Grant in 2013.