Nitasha Kaul

Nitasha Kaul is a widely-travelled multidisciplinary academic, novelist, and public intellectual. She is Chair Professor in Politics, International Relations and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at the University of Westminster, London. She holds a BA Honours in Economics from SRCC, University of Delhi, an MSc (Economics) with a specialisation in Public Policy and a Joint PhD in Economics & Philosophy from University of Hull and has previously been a tenured Assistant Professor in Economics at the Bristol Business School and Associate Professor in Creative Writing in Bhutan.

Over the last three decades, she has published widely on themes relating to democracy, political economy, Hindutva/Indian politics, misogyny, technology/Artificial Intelligence, identity, rise of right-wing nationalism, feminist and postcolonial critiques, small states in geopolitics, regions of Bhutan, Kerala, and Kashmir. She has over 155 publications including the academic monograph ‘Imagining Economics Otherwise: encounters with identity/difference’ (2007), critically acclaimed works of political fiction (Man Asian Literary Prize shortlisted novel ‘Residue’, 2014 and ‘Future Tense’, 2020), co-edited scholarly volumes (‘Can you hear Kashmiri Women Speak? Narratives of Resistance and Resilience’, 2020; ‘The Himalayas from its edges: networks, identities, and place-making’, 2024; ‘Contemporary Colonialities: Kurds and Kashmiris’, 2025), numerous book chapters in groundbreaking collections, and peer-reviewed articles in high-impact journals across social sciences and humanities. She has led research projects funded by bodies including the AHRC and The British Academy, undertaken research assessment for major international bodies (European Research Council, Swedish Research Council, AHRC, ESRC, ISRF and several UKRI programmes relating to democracy and AI such as SALIENT, BRAID DOT and Turing AI Fellowships), and reviewed research for 45+ journals and major publishers.

Her public engagement has included over 330+ invited lectures and keynotes at renowned universities and institutions around the world. In October 2019, she was invited to provide testimony on Human Rights in South Asia at the US Congress, and in 2025, she provided expert testimony to the US Department of Justice. Her work and views have been featured in several hundred newsprint, television, and radio interviews to media including BBC World, BBC Newsnight, BBC News, CNN, Al Jazeera, DW, VOA, TIME, Washington Post, France 24, ABC, CNN.com, Guardian, Independent, Sky News, Financial Times, CBC, and The New York Times.

Originally from Kashmir, educated in India and the UK, and engaging with global audiences, she has significant expertise on the topics of democracy and authoritarianism, gender, security and geopolitics, human rights and conflict.

Her work has provided original analytical accounts focused on tracing the links between democratic backsliding, political polarisation, repression of rights, and insecurity; conceptual innovations such as “Hindutva-Development mix and the Modi myth”, “Econonationalism”, “Postcolonial Neoliberal Nationalism”, “Electorally Legitimated Misogynist Authoritarian (ELMA)”, “cartographic imaginaries”, “sensory repression” have made key contributions to the studies of power and strategy in democracies turning to authoritarianism.

Her work on democratic backsliding and the rise of the Hindu nationalism in India, gender, Kashmir, and Bhutan has established her as a leading voice on the region. She was denied entry to India in 2024 by the BJP government without reason despite all valid documents and an official invitation from a non-BJP state government to a convention on constitutional values. Subsequently in 2025, the government revoked her Overseas Citizenship of India status denying her access to family, terming her work ‘anti-national’ without providing any specific evidence. The escalating actions of the Modi-led BJP government against her paradoxically validate her analysis while providing a personal insight into transnational repression. She continues writing and speaking globally, based on decades of research on the defining social, political, and economics transformations of our time.

An archive of her work can be found here.