Prof. Amitav Acharya

Over Amitav Acharya

AMITAV ACHARYA is Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C. and the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance. He is also Chair of the University’s ASEAN Studies Center. He was formerly a Fellow of the Asia Center, Harvard University, and a Fellow of the Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He has held faculty appointments at York University, Toronto, University of Bristol, UK and National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Professor Acharya has been awarded a number of fellowships and chairs around the world, including the Christensen Fellowship at Oxford University, the Nelson Mandela Visiting Professorship in International Relations at Rhodes University, South Africa and the ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) Chair in Regional Integration at the University of Malaya, Malaysia.

He is an expert on international security issues, including the emerging powers, the war on terror and human security. He is regarded as one of the world’s top specialists on Southeast Asia and Asian affairs.

From Bangkok to Budapest, Delhi to Dubai, Namibia to New York, Perth to Paris, and Singapore to Sicily, Amitav Acharya has traveled and lectured across the world to build networks with scholars and policy makers.

He has written numerous op-eds for international newspapers such as Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, National Public Radio (NPR) online, Huffington Post (Canada), Australian Financial Review, Times of India, Indian Express, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Bangkok Post, Far Eastern Economic Review, Japan Times, South China Morning Post, YaleGlobal Online covering such topics as international and Asian security, the war on terror, and the rise of China and India.

Professor Acharya is the author or editor of 25 books and over 200 journal or magazine articles. His 2009 book, Whose Ideas Matter (Cornell, 2009) was among five books selected in 2010 by the Asia Society of New York for their “exceptional contributions to the understanding of contemporary Asia or US-Asia relations”. His other books include the Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia (2001, 2009); The Age of Fear: Power Versus Principle in the War on Terror, (2004);Asia Rising: Who is Leading? (2007). He is under contract by a major publishing house in Europe to write a book on “The End of the American World Order”.

A regular commentator in the world’s media, he has appeared on BBC World TV, International, National Public Radio (NPR), BBC World Service Radio, Al-Jazeera TV, CNBC TV, CTV (Canada) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio, Radio Australia, Channel News Asia TV, and Thai PBS TV.

He has given numerous public lectures and keynote speeches at universities such as Delhi, Oxford, Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Sydney, Waseda (Tokyo), China Foreign Affairs University (Beijing), Korea University (Seoul), Fudan University (Shanghai), Pretoria, Hebrew University (Jerusalem), Free University (Berlin), and Science Po (Paris). He has been a keynote speaker at international public policy and current affairs conferences in Stockholm, Bordeaux, Munich, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, London, New York, Washington, D.C. Pretoria, and Tokyo.

On 14th April 2011, at the invitation of its President, he addressed the UN General Assembly in New York on the subject of human security.

His professional experience includes serving on the Global Defence Advisory Committee of one of the top ten global companies in aerospace, defence and security alongside a former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and a NATO Commander. He has been a consultant to the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and UNESCO on issues related to development, security and cooperation. He has offered consulting and advisory services to Royal Dutch Shell, The Economist Conferences, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, U.S. National Intelligence Council, Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the U.S. Department of State, and the Italian Ministry of Defence.

On 5th December 2012, Prof Acharya was elected to be the 54th President of the International Studies Association (ISA), “the most well respected and widely known scholarly association” in the field of international studies worldwide. (http://www.isanet.org/about-isa/)

Prof Acharya was born in India and was educated in both India and Australia.