Today we are delighted to introduce the newly appointed member of the Collegium's Academic Senate External link., Professor Navnita Chadha Behera, who will take office on 1 May 2026. The Academic Senate ensures scholarly excellence and a global outlook across all of the Collegium’s programmes, and provides advice on institutional matters. It serves to guarantee the highest scholarly standards and a sustained global commitment in all SCAS activities.

Navnita Chadha Behera is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi. In the academic year 2025-26, she is a Fellow in residence at SCAS. While at SCAS, she is working on her book project, which addresses a fundamental disconnect between the key knowledge categories propounded by conflict and peace researchers and the lived realities of people experiencing those conflicts. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, the project seeks to explore how vernacular registers of thinking, speaking and practising existence can serve as legitimate sites of knowledge production.