Rohan Mukherjee

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Deputy Director of LSE IDEAS. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. I am also a Nonresident Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.

My research focuses on the grand strategies of rising powers and their impact on international security and order, with an empirical specialization in the Asia-Pacific region. My book, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions (Cambridge University Press), received the Hedley Bull Prize from the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and the Hague Journal of Diplomacy Book Award. It shows that whether rising powers cooperate with, challenge, or try to reform an international order depends on the extent to which its core institutions facilitate symbolic equality with the great-power club.

My work has been published in journals such as International Affairs, Asian Security, Contemporary Politics, Survival, Global Governance, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, India Review, and International Journal, as well as in edited volumes from academic presses such as Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, University of North Carolina, and Brookings. I have also co-edited a policy-focused volume that brings together top scholars and analysts across generations from Japan and India to chart the future course of bilateral relations.

I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. I hold an MPA in International Development from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs, and a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford. I have also been a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the MIT Security Studies Program, and a non-resident Visiting Fellow at the United Nations University in Tokyo.

You can find me on Google Scholar, Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and Twitter.

Teaching

TECHNOLOGY & INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

Yale-NUS College, Spring 2022 [syllabus]

Technology is a central aspect of international security and can often decisively shape the balance of power between states as well as the outcomes of military conflicts. This intermediate-level undergraduate course studies the emergence of technology as a function of politics, social institutions, and economics; the impact of technology on international security; and attempts to regulate technologies through international law and institutions. Starting with the railroad in the 19th century, the course will cover the emergence and impact of historical technologies such as the tank, the aircraft carrier, and nuclear weapons, and contemporary technologies such as drones, artificial intelligence, and cyberspace.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Yale-NUS College, Spring 2017, 2019, 2021, Fall 2021 [syllabus]

Why do countries go to war with each other and why do they cooperate? How do domestic institutions or individual leaders impact a country’s external behaviour? Do international laws and institutions have any influence in global affairs? These types of questions have been central to the study of international relations for centuries. In the 20th century, Western scholars continued this tradition and established International Relations (IR) as a social science. This introductory undergraduate course will examine the major theories of international conflict and cooperation that have emerged from this body of scholarship, as well as critiques of the discipline through the lenses of gender, race, and non-Western identity. It will also cover thematic issues such as economic interdependence, global governance, nuclear weapons, transnational movements, and the rise of new powers. The course provides an introduction to IR theory and instances in which insights from IR can illuminate the dynamics of real-world phenomena.

INDIA AS A RISING POWER

Yale-NUS College, Spring 2017-19, 2022 [syllabus]

With the world’s second largest population, third largest economy, and third largest military, India is a pivotal country in Asia and the world. This advanced undergraduate course covers modern India’s history, domestic politics, and foreign policy and provide students with a sophisticated understanding of the world’s largest democracy and its changing place in global affairs. Weekly modules begin by developing relevant context from the literature on international relations, and then delve into detailed works on India.

MODERN SOCIAL THOUGHT 

Yale-NUS College, Fall 2016-18, 2020

This co-taught course introduces second-year undergraduate students to foundational figures of modern social thought and explores the ways in which their writings have been taken up in contemporary social analysis and political practice in different parts of the world. Taking Ibn Khaldun’s pre-modern analysis of society as a point of departure, students immerse themselves in the complex ideas and systematic visions of major social thinkers such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Michel Foucault. The course also grapples with several other characteristically modern developments including (a) the revolution in thought and practice ushered in by feminist activists and thinkers such as Olympe de Gouges, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Simone de Beauvoir; and (b) the provincializing of European understandings of society and modernity as articulated in the writings of Frantz Fanon, Ho Chi Min, Mohandas Gandhi and Lee Kwan Yew, and in the scholarship of Chandra Mohanty, Kwame Appiah, Arjun Appadurai, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Ranajit Guha, among others.

GRAND STRATEGY

Princeton University, Assistant Instructor, Spring 2014

Grand strategy is the broad and encompassing policies and undertakings that political leaders pursue-financial, economic, military, diplomatic-to achieve their objectives in peacetime and in war. This course examines the theory and practice of grand strategy both to illuminate how relations among city-states, empires, kingdoms and nation states have evolved over the centuries and also to identify some common challenges that have confronted all who seek to make and execute grand strategy from Pericles to Barack Obama.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Princeton University, Assistant Instructor, Spring 2013

A study of the politics and history of human rights. What are human rights? How can dictatorships be resisted from the inside and the outside? Can we prevent genocide? Is it morally acceptable and politically wise to launch humanitarian military interventions to prevent the slaughter of foreign civilians? What are the laws of war, and how can we punish the war criminals who violate them? Cases include the Ottoman Empire, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

Contact

Mailing address: 28 College Avenue West, #01-501, Singapore 138533.

Please see my C.V. for further contact information.

Image credits:

Homepage

"Uncle Sam: "Them fellers over there want to disarm but none of 'em dast do it first!"" By John Scott Clubb, 1906. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Uncredited image of Japan and the great power club, available here.

"This Insult, How Can We Bear?" Cartoon in Shankar's Weekly, June 2, 1974.

Book Project

"A Lesson for Anti-Expansionists. Showing how Uncle Sam has been an expansionist first, last, and all the time." By Victor Gillam in Judge, Arkell Publishing Company, New York, 1899.

Curriculum Vitae

"Columbia's Easter bonnet / Ehrhart after sketch by Dalrymple." Cover of Puck magazine, 6 April 1901.