Associate ProfessorManjeet Pardesi

I am Associate Professor of International Relations in the Political Science and International Relations Programme and Asia Research Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. My research focuses on global orders and global history, great power politics, Asian security, and the Sino-Indian rivalry.

I am also Honorary Professor at the New Zealand Defence Force Command and Staff College. 

My recent book, Divergent Worlds: What the Ancient Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Can Tell Us About the Future of International Order (co-authored with Amitav Acharya), was published by Yale University Press in 2025 and received the 2026 T. V. Paul Book Prize from the International Studies Association. A Chinese-language edition is expected in 2026-2027.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300214987/divergent-worlds/

I also co-authored The Sino-Indian Rivalry: Implications for Global Order (with Sumit Ganguly and William R. Thompson), published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. 

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009193542

My work has appeared in several journals including European Journal of International Relations, Security Studies, Survival, Global Studies Quarterly, Australian Journal of International Affairs, and Asian Security as well as in edited volumes. I co-edited The Oxford Handbook of India's National Security (Oxford, 2018) and India's Military Modernization: Challenges and Prospects (Oxford, 2014). I served as the Managing Editor of Asian Security from June 2018 to June 2025.

I hold a PhD in Political Science from Indiana University, Bloomington. I also have an MSc in Strategic Studies from the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (now the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, and a BEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from NTU.