Professor Amrita Narlikar’s research expertise lies in the areas of international negotiation, World Trade Organization, multilateralism, and India’s foreign policy & strategic thought. Amrita moved to Germany in 2014 to take up the Presidency of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) from the University of Cambridge, where she had held a fully tenured “Readership” (regularized to “Professorship” under the university’s internationally aligned system). She read for her M.Phil. and D.Phil. at Balliol, Oxford, and also held a Junior Research Fellowship at St John’s College, Oxford. Some of Amrita’s books include (co-authored with Aruna Narlikar and Amitabh Mattoo) Strategic Choices, Ethical Dilemmas: Stories from the Mahabharat, Penguin Random House, 2023; (guest-edited with Daniel Drezner) The How Not To Guide for International Relations, International Affairs, Centenary Special Issue, 2022; Poverty Narratives and Power Paradoxes in International Trade Negotiations and Beyond, Cambridge University Press, 2020; and (co-authored with Aruna Narlikar) Bargaining with a Rising India: Lessons from the Mahabharat, Oxford University Press, 2014.

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

For me, the most exciting research is at the interface of different fields – work that literally pushes the boundaries of sub-disciplines and disciplines, and helps break down intellectual silos, while still being grounded in the rigours of at least one discipline/sub-discipline. An example is the work that is happening in geoeconomics, or what my colleagues Henry Farrell and Abe Newman have called the “Weaponisation of Interdependence”. This work requires scholars of International Political Economy and Security Studies to leave their comfort zones and collaborate with each other. More of this type of work is needed, for instance in the area of multilateralism and global economic governance (both for scholars and for policy-makers) – as I’ve argued in a recent article.

Another example, I would argue – and not enough of this is being done yet – is to bring together questions of international politics and animal rights. There is important and interesting scholarship on the issue of animal rights in the fields of Philosophy and Law, but unfortunately, this does not often translate easily into the realms of foreign policy and IR. One reason for the paucity of this type of scholarship in a praxis-oriented field like ours could be that people have assumed that these are questions of “mere” theory that make for interesting armchair thinking and “philosophical” deliberations but are assumed to be far-removed from real-world impact. Whereas in fact, these are questions of life and death – absolutely so, in terms of the extreme suffering and killing of individual animals or the extinction of entire species. And even if we want a take based on human self-interest, these are questions of existential importance for the human race, for instance, if we want to reduce the occurrence of pandemics.

Another reason perhaps why much of Political Science and IR adopts a predominantly anthropocentric lens to most questions that we seek to answer – justice, distribution, war, survival – probably has to do with the fact that our disciplines have been dominated by Western theoretical and historical perspectives. Were Political Science and IR willing to engage more with alternative traditions from the Global South, they might be less blinkered. This is something that I have tried to show in my most recent, co-authored book on the Mahabharat, as well as in various interviews (e.g. in German or English versions). Plus, I have long been arguing for the importance of mainstreaming intellectual ideas from the “Global South.”

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

One significant shift for me was on the issue of trade multilateralism, and the urgent need to broaden this agenda for both scholars and practitioners (and in ways that are significantly different from the old trade-and-labour-standards or trade-and-environmental-standards debates). I engaged in a self-reflection on this topic in an article that was published in a centenary issue of International Affairs last year – so rather than repeat the points I highlighted there, let me share the link.

A point that I did not, however, make in that article, and which I would like the opportunity to make today is that a part of my research agenda on globalisation and governance has shifted in another important way. In much of my previous work, I had argued for the cause of developing countries or the “Global South” – but I too was guilty then of the anthropocentrism that I now critique many fellow-academics for. It is now clear to me that we cannot and should not have a globalisation – or resulting prosperity from trade liberalisation – that is built on the suffering of our fellow more-than-human beings. Just as national security has come to feature prominently in the work that I have been doing on trade politics, so also animal rights have entered my research on narratives, multilateralism and global order.

To whom do I attribute this expanded vision? Well, our traditional Indian texts (like the Mahabharat) had always shaped my world-view, and I have become more aware of this legacy in recent years. I have also benefited from interactions with animal rights activists on social media, a few like-minded scholars, but above all my dog, Don. I had always loved animals, even as a child, but Donny taught me that our more-than-human friends are deserving not only of love, but also respect and dignity. You can read more about how he changed my life in a piece........

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