Biography
Dr. Khushi Singh Rathore is a Feminist International Relations (IR) scholar specialising in Indian foreign policy and postcolonial diplomacy. Her research integrates feminist and decolonial approaches to diplomacy and international politics, focusing on Gender in Diplomacy, Women Diplomats, and Foreign Ministries. Her interests encompass diplomatic history and Asian foreign relations. She holds a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, and serves as Associate Editor for The Hague Journal of Diplomacy.
Her doctoral thesis, ‘Women in Early Years of India’s Foreign Policy: Evaluating the Role of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit’, critically examined Pandit’s pioneering role as India’s first woman diplomat. Her recent publications critically intervene in Gender and Diplomacy and Feminist IR, including co-edited volumes: Gender and Diplomacy: Critical Junctures, Innovations and Future Research Directions (with Dr Elise Stephenson, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) and the Routledge Contemporary Reader of Feminist International Relations (with Dr Catherine Goetze, Routledge, 2025).
Committed to scholarly engagement, she holds leadership roles as incoming Section Co-Chair (2026–2027) for ISA’s Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section and At-Large Representative for its South Asia World Politics Section. She is also a member of the EUI Working Group on Academic Freedom and hosts the New Books Network podcast.
As a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at EUI, she is based in the Department of History and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. She is advancing her research on postcolonial women diplomats and the idea of Asia through her project Diplomatic Intimacies: Asia in Indian Women’s Postcolonial Thought, aiming to reshape conventional understandings of global diplomacy.