Dr Swasti Rao is a scholar, author and commentator on geopolitics, defence and geoeconomics. She is Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs, O.P. Jindal Global University; Advisor & Consultant to India’s Ministry of Defence; and Consulting Editor for International and Strategic Affairs at ThePrint. She is also a Non-Resident Fellow at Eastern Circles, Paris, and a peer reviewer for RUSI, London.
She has published widely on implications of long standing conflicts on strategic infrastructure, focusing on both geopolitical and geoeconomics dimensions.
Before joining academia, Dr Rao was Fellow at the MP-IDSA, India’s premier think tank under the aegis of the MoD, where she worked on projects for the PMO, MEA and MoD.
An alumna of JNU, the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and IHEDN, France, she has been honoured by India’s HQ Integrated Defence Staff, India (2026), the French Senate (2025), and the Indian Air Force (2024).
Widely published across academic, policy and media outlets, she is the author of the forthcoming ‘Ukraine Untold’.