Professor Dibyesh Anand

In addition to being a Professor of International Relations, as my main institutional profile shows, I have taken on the responsibility of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement and Employability). Until September 2023, I was Head of the School of Social Sciences. 

I am often considered a curious scholar, a lifelong student, a passionate lecturer, or a public intellectual. I have various responsibilities within and beyond our University and they can be found on my main profile. 

I joined the University of Westminster in 2007 as a Reader (Associate Professor for those used to the non-British system) in International Relations. I have been a Professor since 2016. I moved from the University of Bath, where I was a lecturer. I did my PhD (1998-2002) in the Department of Politics at the University of Bristol, and the topic was related to Western representations of Tibet and its political and cultural significance. I have never been comfortable within a discipline. While my MA was in International Law and Politics at the University of Hull (1997-1998), the Bachelor's was in History from St Stephen's College, University of Delhi. I could not have pursued my Master's and PhD without scholarships. While the MA was sponsored by the British Chevening Scholarship, the PhD was made possible due to the University of Bristol and Overseas Research Scholarships.

I have shifted places and disciplines, I have experienced elite and non-elite as well as religious and secular education, and I engage with concepts as much as with everyday politics. What has remained consistent so far is my desire to produce scholarship that is meaningful to groups and peoples who are often marginalised, minoritised, occupied and suppressed. This desire comes across in my research, academic writings and public engagement on topics including colonial practices of postcolonial states; China, Tibet and Xinjiang; Hindu nationalism in India; politics and international relations of stateless Tibetans; politics of gender, security and representation; ethnic relations in Zanzibar; emergence of China and India as major non-Western powers; contested nature of nation-state formations in China and South Asia.

I have authored the monographs "Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination" (published in South Asia as ''Tibet: A Victim of Geopolitics") and "Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear", co-edited "Contemporary Colonialities: Kurds and Kashmiris", and published a number of chapters in edited collections and articles in journals. The easiest way to locate my publications is through my Academia page.

I have a significant presence in popular media, and a Google search for my name links to a range of forums, including comment articles in The Guardian, YouTube videos, cited expert views in newspapers of the USA, UK, China, India and Singapore, and blogs. I have held visiting positions at the University of California Berkeley, Australian National University, Centre for Bhutan Studies, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Central University of Hyderabad and delivered plenary talks, lectures and seminar papers at institutions in USA, Europe, India, Bhutan, China, Russia, Pakistan, Canada, Singapore, and Australia.

I feel strongly about the values of freedom and liberal democracy and ethical and engaged scholarship. In recent years, significant part of my energy goes into matters of equity, diversity and inclusion, including leading the change and reflecting on it.

By the time I joined Westminster in 2007, I published Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination with University of Minnesota Press. This was based on my doctoral and postdoctoral research. It was republished in 2009 in South Asia where the bulk of Tibetan exiles live as Tibet: A Victim of Geopolitics. A revised version was translated by the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, but there was no progress on its actual publication. This body of my research provided postcolonial critique of colonial practices that shaped Tibet as an international problem and engaged with the politics of identity and representation in the Tibetan diaspora. I have argued that both Western ideas and practices are complicit in Chinese control of Tibet. I continue to write about Tibet, including the thorny question of reincarnation. I speak extensively as a public intellectual in solidarity with Tibetan movement. I have recently written on the contested geopolitics of reincarnation and the Dalai Lama. 

I have researched the cooperative and competitive relations between China and India, with special reference to the border dispute and differing attitudes toward Tibet. It also engages with the significance of China-India relations for other peoples and countries in the Himalayan region. I am currently working on a monograph on the border dispute and its significance for the Himalayan region.

I have done extensive research on rightwing majoritarian nationalism in India and published several articles and a book Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear. I conceptualise the phenomenon as 'pornonationalism', as violent, and as the biggest threat to the secular idea of India as a democracy. I am proactive in my public engagement activities, through organising events, hosting delegations and social media. Among the most prominent events were one involving Arundhati Roy  and Wang Lixiong in 2011 and then the Dalai Lama's visit to the University of Westminster in 2012. I also organised a public event on Kashmir and Tibet, involving two prominent dissident intellectuals: Wang Lixiong from China and Arundhati Roy from India. Most of these events are recorded and available via youtube. 

In recent years, I have primarily focused on colonial practices embedded within the postcolonial states, on China, and on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. 

For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.