Our Founder: Dr. Sriparna Pathak is an Associate Professor in the Jindal School of International Affairs of O.P. Jindal Global University, Haryana, India. She teaches courses on Foreign Policy of China as well as Theories of International Relations. Her previous work experience covers Universities like Gauhati University, Don Bosco University; the Ministry of External Affairs, where she worked as a Consultant for the Policy Planning and Research Division, working on China’s domestic and foreign polices; think tanks like Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi and Kolkata respectively, South Asia Democratic Forum in Brussels where she is a Research Fellow and the Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research in New Delhi where she worked as a researcher. She has also worked for UNICEF, Madhya Pradesh, researching on governmental educational and medical interventions and impacts on communities.
Awarded a Doctorate degree from the Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 2015, Dr. Pathak is fluent in English, Mandarin and Indian languages like Hindi, Bengali and Assamese.
She has been a recipient of the joint fellowship awarded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, India and the China Scholarship Council, Government of the People’s Republic of China, and she spent two years in China, actively researching various aspects of China’s domestic economy. Her areas of interest are China’s domestic economy, trade and economic relations between India and China and China’s foreign policy and economic linkages with the world.
Dr. Pathak has written more than a dozen chapters in various books on China, the publishers of which include Routlege, Sage and Pentagon among others. Her journal publications include Journal of Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations, National Sun-Yat Sen University, Taiwan to Journal of Indo Pacific Perspectives of Air University of the U.S. Air Force. She has also been a guest speaker at several think tanks in India and abroad and has been interviewed by media organisations ranging from Sankei Shimbun to Huffington Post to South China Morning Post to The Star, Toronto to Associated Press, Beijing among others. She has also been part of several panels and talk shows in India and in the PRC respectively.
She is currently working on a project on India’s Act East Policy and China’s responses. She is also conducting various types of research on insurgency and China’s support to it in Northeast India. She has been a resource person for various media organisations, colleges, Universities and think tanks within India and abroad. Dr. Pathak firmly believes in the necessity for using specialised knowledge, relying on primary sources on countries of Northeast Asia for strengthening India’s international relations.
Director: Dr. Manoj Kumar Panigrahi
Dr. Manoj Kumar Panigrahi is an Assistant Professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs. Dr. Panigrahi holds a Bachelors in Political Science from Berhampur University, Master’s degree in Diplomacy, Law, and Business from O.P. Jindal Global University (India). He was a recipient of Taiwan’s Ministry of Education Scholarship to pursue doctoral studies. He completed his Ph.D. from National Chengchi University (Taiwan). He was a Research Fellow at Taiwan NextGen Foundation based in Taipei, Taiwan.
His research interests include ethnic conflicts, foreign policy, and the culture of Indo-Pacific countries. His Ph.D. dissertation examined the role of mediators in separatist movements in a comparative context. His research also focused on exploring the causation behind the formation of factions in armed ethnic groups and how they impact the peacemaking process.
Dr. Panigrahi regularly writes for several of Taiwan’s print media. He contributes to a bilingual blog column where he writes and promotes Indian culture in Taiwan.
He has received the Best Scholarship Recipient Student award from Taiwan’s Ministry of Education Scholarship (2016-2020) for his work on sharing Indian culture at the grassroots level in Taiwan. He has been invited to more than 100 schools and universities across Taiwan, amounting to more than 150 lectures so far.
