Vineet Thakur
Assistant professor
- Name
- Dr. V. Thakur
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 1256
- v.thakur@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0001-9273-579x
I am a University Lecturer in International Relations at the Institute for History, Leiden University.
More information about Vineet Thakur
News
-
Global Governance Journal comes to Leiden -
Call for Papers: Humanities and International Relations Graduate Conference -
Netherlands and Japan united by a tradition of mutual curiosity -
One history, different memories. Does this always lead to conflict? -
New co-convener team for LUCIR -
Vineet Thakur and Karen Smith on western dominance in International Relations
PhD candidtates
I graduated with a doctorate from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in May 2014. After teaching briefly at Ambedkar University (India), I moved to South Africa for a postdoc at the University of Johannesburg. Two and a half memorable years later, I landed a short teaching gig at School of Oriental and African Studies London. From there it was a short hop across the pond -- and since September 2017, I have been teaching, happily, at Leiden University. My research has enabled me to accumulate brief fellowships at the University of Cambridge, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and Rhodes University.
I started out as a postcolonial IR scholar with interest in 'decolonizing' the discipline, its subject matter and its practices. Over time, I have come to reflect on the onerous burden of postcoloniality in IR and, coming from India, its caste-effacing character. History as my secondary discipline is thus a refuge -- research-wise, diplomatic biography is where I feel most at home.
Books
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V.S. Srinivasa Sastri: A Liberal Life (Routledge, 2023)
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India’s First Diplomat: V.S. Srinivasa Sastri and the Making of Liberal Internationalism (Bristol University Press 2021)
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South Africa, Race and the Making of International Relations (Rowman and Littlefield 2020 – with Peter Vale; winner, Francesco Guicciardini Prize for Best Book in Historical International Relations)
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The Imperial Discipline: Race and the Founding of International Relations (Pluto Press, 2020 – with Alexander Davis and Peter Vale)
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Postscripts on Independence: Foreign Policy Discourses in India and South Africa (Oxford University Press, 2018)
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Jan Smuts and the Indian Question (University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2017).
Assistant professor
- Faculty of Humanities
- Institute for History
- History and International Studies
- Thakur V. (2024), Global South, globalities and the frontier zone. In: Hönke J., Cezne E. & Yang Y. (Eds.), Africa’s global infrastructures: South–South transformations in practice. London: Hurst . 217-231.
- Vale P. & Thakur V. (24 January 2024), South Africa’s genocide case against Israel is the country’s proudest foreign policy moment in three decades: The Conversation. [web article].
- Thakur V. (2024), Brahmins and balance of power: re-reading A.P. Rana's imperatives of non-alignment, Global Studies Quarterly 4(1): ksae006.
- Thakur V., Bharat, that was India: The India Forum. [web essay].
- Thakur V. & Vale P. (14 June 2024), Why ICC warrant against Netanyahu has baffled the West: 360info. [web article].
- Chacko P. & Thakur V. (2024), Postcolonialism and foreign policy. In: Smith S., Dunne T., Hadfield A. & Kitchen N. (Eds.), Foreign policy: theories, actors, cases. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Thakur V. & Choudhary L.R. (2024), How a Nazi occupied India’s first chair in International Relations, Review of International Studies : 1-18.
- Thakur V. (2024), World War I and the Emergence of Indian Diplomacy. In: Roy A. (Ed.), The Diplomatic Dimensions of Military History: Indian Armed Forces in France and Flanders during World Wars I and II. New Delhi: KW Publishers. 40-50.
- Thakur V. (2024), A South African Scandal, India's World 1(1): .
- Thakur V. (2023), Casting and casteing Indian diplomacy, Diplomatica: a journal of diplomacy and society 5(1): 130-137.
- Thakur V. (2023), V.S. Srinivasa Sastri: a liberal life. Londen: Routledge.
- Thakur V. (2023), On dreamworlds, declinism and difference, International Politics 60(3): 737-741.
- Thakur V. (2022), Travels in diplomacy: V.S. Srinivasa Sastri and G.S. Bajpai in 1921–1922, International History Review 44(4): 874-891.
- O'Malley A.M. & Thakur V. (2022), Introduction: shaping a global horizon, new histories of the Global South and the UN, Humanity 13(1): 55-65.
- Getachew A., Bell D., Enloe C. & Thakur V. (2022), Theorizing the history of women's international thinking at the ‘end of international theory’, International Theory: A Journal of International Politics, Law and Philosophy 14(3): 394-418.
- Schmahmann B., Thakur V. & Vale P. (2022), Defining a sphere of influence: Karel Landman’s centenary monument, Image and Text 36: 1-29.
- Thakur V. (2 January 2021), What today’s politicians could learn from the relationship between Gandhi and his critic VSS Sastri. India (online): Scroll.in. [web article].
- Thakur V. (2021), Colonial subjects as hegemonic actors: V.S. Srinivasa Sastri's 1922 public diplomacy tour of British dominion territories. In: Alexander C.R. (Ed.), The Frontiers of Public Diplomacy: Hegemony, Morality and Power in the International Sphere. New York/London: Routledge. 78-95.
- Thakur V. (2021), India’s First Diplomat: V.S. Srinivasa Sastri and the Making of Liberal Internationalism. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
- Thakur V. & Smith K. (2021), Introduction to the Special Issue: the multiple births of International Relations, Review of International Studies 47(5): 571-579.
- Thakur V. & Vale P. (2021), The Guicciardini Prize Forum: reply to comments, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 34(6): 895-896.
- Thakur V. & Vale P. (2020), South Africa, Race and the Making of International Relations. UK: Rowman and Littlefield.
- Vale P. & Thakur V. (2020), IR and the Making of the White Man’s World. In: Tickner A.B. & Smith K. (Eds.), International Relations from the Global South: Worlds of Difference. London: Routledge. 56-74.
- Davis A.E., Thakur V. & Vale P. (2020), The Imperial Discipline: Race and the Founding of International Relations. London: Pluto.
- Thakur V. (2020), Global South Adda (Webcast) (Nepal Institute for International Cooperation and ENgagement). [other].
- Bhambra G.K, Bouka Y., Persaud R.B., Rutazibwa O.U., Thakur V., Bell D., Smith K., Haastrup T. & Adem S. (2020), Why Is Mainstream International Relations Blind to Racism?, Foreign Policy : .
- Thakur V. & Vale P. (2019), The Empty Neighbourhood: Race and Disciplinary Silence. In: Edkins J. (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Critical International Relations. London and New York: Routledge. 34-48.
- Sundaram S.S. & Thakur V. (2019), A pragmatic methodology for studying international practices, Journal of International Political Theory : .
- Thakur V. & Sundaram S. (2019), India, South Africa and the Cape Town Agreement: a diplomatic history, Indian Politics and Policy 2(2): 3-25.
- Thakur V. (2018), Postscripts on Independence: Foreign Policy Ideas, Identity and Institutions in India and South Africa. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
- Davis A.E. & Thakur V. (2018), ‘An act of faith' or a new ‘Brown Empire’?: The Dismissal of India’s Transnational Anti-Racism, 1945-1961, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 56(1): 22-39.
- Thakur V. (2018), An Asian Drama: The Asian Relations Conference, 1947, The International History Review : .
- Thakur V. (2018), Jan Smuts, Jawaharlal Nehru and the legacies of liberalism, E-International Relations : .
- Thakur V. & Vale P. (2018), From expert to expertise: Frederik van Zyl Slabbert's imaginary and negotiations in South Africa. In: Leander A. & Waever O. (Eds.), Assembling Exclusive Expertise: Knowledge, Ignorance and Conflict Resolution in the Global South. New York: Routledge.
- Thakur V. (2017), Jan Smuts and the Indian Question no. 2. Pietermaritzburg: University of Kwazulu Natal Press.
- Thakur V. (2017), The ‘hardy annual’: A History of India’s First UN Resolution, India Review 16(4): 401-429.
- Thakur V. & Davis A.E. (2017), A Communal Affair over International Affairs: The Arrival of IR in Late Colonial India, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 40(4): 689-705.
- Thakur V., Davis A.E. & Vale P. (2017), Imperial Mission, ‘Scientific’ Method: an Alternative Account of the Origins of IR, Millennium : Journal of International Studies 46(1): 3-23.
- Thakur V. (2017), Liberal, Liminal and Lost: India’s first diplomats and the narrative of foreign policy, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 45(2): 232-258.
- Davis A.E. & Thakur V. (2016), Walking the thin line: India’s anti-racist diplomatic practice in South Africa, Canada and Australia, 1946-1955, The International History Review 38(5): 880-899.
- Thakur V. (2016), Reflections on dead theory in International Relations’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 15(1): 140-145.
- Vale P. & Thakur V. (2015), Out in the Dark: Knowledge, Power and IPE in Southern Africa, Contexto Internacional 37(3): 1011-1040.
- Thakur V. (2015), Africa and the Theoretical Peace in IR’, International Political Sociology 9(3): 213-229.
- Thakur V. (2015), Foreign Policy and its People: Transforming the Apartheid Department of Foreign Affairs, Diplomacy and Statecraft 26(3): 514-533.
- Thakur V. (2014), The Colonial Origins of Indian Foreign Policymaking, Economic and Political Weekly 49(32): 58-64.
- Thakur V. (2014), India’s Diplomatic Entrepreneurism: Revisiting India’s Role in the Korean Crisis, 1950-52, China Report 49(3): 273-298.
- Thakur V. (2012), Indian Foreign Policy. In: Chimni B.S. & Mallavarapu S. (Eds.), International Relations: Perspectives for the Global South. New Delhi: Pearson.
- Thakur V. (2011), Jawaharlal Nehru: Thinking beyond International Relations Theory, Indian Journal of Politics 45(3-4): 224-240.
- Thakur V. (2010), India’s Defence and Security Initiatives’. In: Kumar S. (Ed.), India’s National Security Annual Review 2010. New Delhi: Routledge.