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Pallavi Raghavan is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Ashoka University. Her book, titled Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India-Pakistan Relationship, 1947 – 1952 was published in 2020, by Hurst& Co. (UK), and OUP (US). For her next project, she is interested in developing a broader history of the British Empire’s theories of partition in the twentieth century. This project is to be contextualized in a comparative framework looking at partition histories in different contexts, such as Ireland, Palestine, and South Asia. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, including The Economic and Political Weekly, Modern Asian Studies, and International History Review. She also contributes frequently to digital news platforms such as The Wire and Scroll.in. She has her PhD in Modern South Asian History from the University of Cambridge.

Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?

The resurgence of interest in South Asia’s historical setting as a component in the shaping of its internationalist thinking is opening up exciting possibilities of enquiry. It allows us to appreciate how the processes of state making have to be understood in a context specific way, and think about how state formation isn’t always a one-size fits-all formula. This in turn helps us to think about the complexities of international behaviour further, and look at the reasons that different states follow different paths in the international arena. I think the field of Historical IR in South Asia is only going to grow, and I look forward to following its evolution. 

How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

Increasingly, I am concerned and fearful of the way the rules based international system of the twentieth century—something that I took for granted when I was studying—is increasingly under serious attack. All the assumptions that people worked with in the aftermath of the second world war—that nation states, not ethnicities or vaguely defined civilisational values would count for the most in decision making, that a sense of liberal internationalism held these systems in place, and that a serious........

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