Professor Swarna Rajagopalan trained as a political scientist. She works as an independent scholar, consultant and writer and peace and gender equality are common concerns across her work.

Professor Rajagopalan’s research interests relate to security, politics and gender. She writes regularly for both academic projects and general publications. She has taught politics and international relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Michigan State University and Yale University. She has also taught at Sophia College, Mumbai and more recently, at the National Management School’s India campus for Broward University.

She founded and ran The Prajnya Trust from 2006-2025. Her work at Prajnya combined research and public education with training, advocacy, network and capacity-building.

Professor Rajagopalan’s consultancy work has included academic projects, from conceptualising and organising academic conferences to hosting and co-directing a summer study abroad programme for Michigan State in Chennai for two years. She has been part of a recently completed British Academy-funded project on domestic violence help-seeking in three Indian states. She led a regional project relating the rise of extremism to gender-based violence.

She is a founding member of the Women’s Regional Network (2011-2024), a network of women peace activists from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka.

In 2023, Professor Rajagopalan became Chair of the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on Women and Politics in the Global South.

Professor Rajagopalan’s website is at https://www.swarnar.com.

Research

• ‘Stuck in a Circle’: Surviving violence and everyday resilience in Tamil Nadu, Surviving Violence Project, 2023. The policy brief ishere.
• The Impact of Extremism on Sexual and Gender-based Violence in India, Extremism and Gender-based Violence in South Asia Project, with Natasha Singh Raghuvanshi, IMADR, Colombo, 2022.The project overview is here.

Publications

• “Human Security in South Asia,” in theRoutledge Handbook of the International Relations of South Asia, edited by Sumit Ganguly and Frank O’Donnell, Routledge (2022).
• “Fenceless fields,” inTransdisciplinary Ethnography in India: Women in the Field, edited by Rosa Maria Perez and Lina M. Fruzzetti, Routledge (2022).
• “Feminism, Security, and International Relations: Reflections,” inWomen and Power: Gender within International Relations and Diplomacy, edited by Nutan kapoor Mahawar and Ankita Dutta, Indian Council for World Affairs, Macmillan (2022).
• “Unintended Consequences: Northeastern Peace Accords and Manipur’s Women,”Peace Prints, Volume 7, No.1, Summer 2021.
• “Safe, Equal Workplaces: A Journey towards Rights and Justice,” inHer Right to Equality, edited by Nisha Agrawal, Rethinking India series, Vintage Penguin Random House (2021).
• “A Gender-Sensitive Indian Foreign Policy”, Indian Council for World Affairs, pages 14-18, March 11, 2021.
• “The Letters: An Exchange on Patriarchy, Militarization and Feminist Peace Activism,” with Asha Hans, inExploring Betty A. Reardon’s Perspective on Peace Education: Looking Back, Looking Forward, edited by Dale T. Snauwaert (Springer, 2019).
• “RCSS at 25,” Himal Southasian, May 31, 2018.
• “Human Security in India,” in The Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies, edited bySumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell and Joseph Chinyong Liow, Routledge (2017).
• “Scrapbooks: A Set of Seven War Stories,” inWomen against War System, edited by Nadja Furlan Stante, Anja Zalta, Maja Lamberger Khatib (Lit Verlag, 2017).
• “Peace, with women: Women’s political participation in post-conflict contexts,” in Women and Politics of Peace: South Asia Narratives on Militarization, Power, and Justice, edited by Rita Manchanda (SAGE, 2017).
• Openings for Peace: UNSCR 1325, Women and Security in India, co-edited with Asha Hans, SAGE (2016).
• Women and Disasters in South Asia: Survival, Security and Development, co-edited with Linda Racioppi, Routledge India (2016).
• “Grand Strategic Thought in the Ramayana and Mahabharata,” inIndia’s Grand Strategy: History, Theory, Cases, edited by Kanti Bajpai, Saira Basit and V. Krishnappa, Routledge, 2014, pages 31-62.

Teaching Modules

Global Politics in the 21st Century (An Introduction)

Indian Foreign Policy

South Asian Politics and International Relations