Professor Varun Sahni, Professor in International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi has been appointed as the new Vice Chancellor of the University of Jammu for a period of three years.
Governor, Mr. N.N. Vohra, in his capacity as Chancellor of the Jammu University, has made the appointment of Professor Sahni, based on the recommendations made by a three-member Search Committee constituted on 18 August 2008. The Committee was headed by Professor G.K. Chadha, Chief Executive Officer, South Asian University and Member, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council with Dr Sudhir S Bloeria, former Chief Secretary, J&K and Prof Atul Sharma, Vice Chancellor, Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar and Member 13th Finance Commission, as its members.
Professor Sahni is a Professor in International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, and Editor of South Asian Survey. He has been lecturing regularly at the National Defence College, New Delhi; Foreign Service Institute, New Delhi; College of Naval Warfare, Mumbai; and Army War College, Mhow.
Before joining the JNU faculty in 1995, Varun Sahni was Junior Research Fellow in Politics and Junior Dean at Lincoln College, Oxford; Resident Fellow of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, New Delhi, and Reader in Latin American Politics at Goa University. He has held visiting fellowships/professorships at Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA (1997); CIDE, Mexico City (1997-1999); National Defense University, Washington, DC (2003); and the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (2008).
Professor Sahni has been "Personnalite d’Avenir" at the French Foreign Ministry (1995) and was a member of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Investigadores [National System of Researchers] (1999-2002). He serves on the editorial boards of the Chinese Journal of International Politics (Oxford University Press), Asian Security Series, Stanford University Press and Contemporary Politics, and will join the editorial board of International Studies Quarterly in 2009. He also serves on the following bodies: Governing Body, Indian Council for South Asian Cooperation (ICSAC), New Delhi; Executive Committee, Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), New Delhi; and Research Committee, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. He was a Member of the Executive Committee, Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi (2002-2008).
Originally a student of military politics in Latin America, Varun Sahni wrote his doctoral thesis on the political history of the Argentine Navy at the University of Oxford (1991), where he was an Inlaks scholar. He has written 75 journal articles, book chapters and research papers on nuclear deterrence issues, regional security, emerging balances in the Asia-Pacific, evolving security concepts, Indian politics, emerging powers, international relations theory and Latin American military politics. His research articles have been published in Current History, Contemporary South Asia and Journal of Latin American Studies, amongst others.
Professor Sahni is currently writing a book on India’s external security as a Fellow of the New India Foundation, Bangalore. In recognition of his "outstanding achievements in research and teaching", he was awarded the VKRV Rao Prize in Social Sciences for the year 2006.