Deepak Nair

Welcome!

I am a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Australian National University (ANU). I was previously in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

I received a MSc and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to this, I received a BA (hons) in History from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

Research

My research centers on the microsociological study of international relations. Everyday practices, face-to-face interactions, emotions, and embodied experiences are the small units of analysis that take centerstage in my research. Long considered irrelevant in a field dominated by grand and structural theories, my work is part of a growing body of scholarship that shows how small units have a distinct form and enjoy a puzzling degree of autonomy from wider structural constraints, making them consequential in world politics.

While I have an abiding interest in the wonders of the ‘micro,’ I wrestle with my structural and historical instincts. This informs my interest in asking how micro-level units are tethered to wider structures of class, race, and gender. In making these connections I draw a great deal of inspiration from structural approaches like historical sociology and Bourdieusian political sociology.

Empirically, I pursue my interest in the micro by studying diplomats and international bureaucrats. Most of my fieldwork has been in the circuitries of everyday diplomacy spanning ministries and diplomatic enclaves in Southeast Asia, especially in the budding ASEAN diplomatic field in Jakarta, Indonesia. I use interpretive approaches and methods in my research, mainly elite interviews and ethnography (when possible), supported by historical print-media analysis.

Besides my research, I love literary fiction (especially postcolonial fiction in South and Southeast Asia), sci-fi films, and nearly anything by the virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz.

Current Projects

I am working on three projects. My first project is a political sociology of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – a diplomatic body forged at the height of Cold War counterrevolution in Southeast Asia that has outlasted Afro-Asian, Socialist, and Black internationalist projects of postcolonial worldmaking in the twentieth century. I am completing a book manuscript based on more than a decade of fieldwork for this project. Titled “Architects of ‘Nothing’: The Cultural Production of Inaction in ASEAN,” the book is about how seemingly banal and empty activity can have powerful political effects.

My second project brings Goffmanian dramaturgy and theatre metaphors to the study of security alignments. I specifically look at how non-alignment (a poorly understood if not widely misunderstood alignment posture) is produced and performed on the stage of world politics. Drawing on a collection of cases from Cold War Asia, I advance a novel conceptual account of the staging of non-alignment in world politics that is also relevant to how it is practiced in the contemporary era of major power contest.

My third project is on the grim, staggeringly complicated, and endlessly fascinating Cold War conflict that was the Third Indochina War (1978-1991). My project zooms in on the diplomacy of conservative capitalist Southeast Asian states as they waged this grand Cold War conflict in the highest corridors of world diplomacy.

Please contact me if you would like more information on any of these projects or just touch base to express shared interests.

Research Interests

Microsociology, Diplomacy, International Bureaucracy, Ethnography, International Politics of Southeast Asia, ASEAN.

Awards & Grants

Publications

Journal Articles

Nair, Deepak (2024) “Using Bourdieu’s Habitus in International Relations.” International Studies Quarterly 68(2) https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqae007
Nair, Deepak (2023) “Populists in the Shadow of Great Power Competition: Duterte, Sukarno, and Sihanouk in Comparative Perspective.” European Journal of International Relations 29(2) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13540661231173866
Nair, Deepak (2023) “International Relations in Southeast Asia” in Patrick James (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373137366_OUPBiblio
Nair, Deepak (2021) “Spooks, Goons, ‘Intellectuals’: The Military-Catholic Network in the Cold War Diplomacy of Suharto’s Indonesia,” History and Anthropology 33(3): 372-390 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02757206.2021.1946051
Nair, Deepak (2021) “‘Hanging Out’ While Studying ‘Up’: Doing Ethnographic Fieldwork in International Relations” International Studies Review 23 (4):1300-1327. https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viab001
Nair, Deepak (2020) “Emotional Labour and the Power of International Bureaucrats.” International Studies Quarterly 64 (3): 573-587 https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaa030
Nair, Deepak (2020) “Sociability in International Politics: Golf and ASEAN’s Cold War Diplomacy,” International Political Sociology 14 (2): 196-214. https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olz024 (Winner of the ISA Diplomatic Studies Section Article Prize 2021).
Nair, Deepak (2019) “Saving Face in Diplomacy: A Political Sociology of Face-to-Face Interactions in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.” European Journal of International Relations 25(3): 672-697. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066118822117 (Winner of the Best Article Prize in the EJIR 2020.)
Nair, Deepak (2011) “ASEAN’s Core Norms in the Context of the ‘Global Economic and Financial Crisis’: Is the Crisis a Catalyst for Institutional Development?” Asian Survey 51(2): 245-267. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/as.2011.51.2.245
Nair, Deepak (2009) “Regionalism in the Asia-Pacific/East Asia: A Frustrated Regionalism?” Contemporary Southeast Asia 31(1): 110-142. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41288791

Book Chapters

Nair, Deepak. (2024). “A Diplomatic Image and its Afterlife: Bangkok 1967 and ASEAN’s Creation Myth.” In Naoko Shimazu and Mathew Philips eds. Cold War Asia: A Visual History of Global Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Nair, Deepak (2023) “The Military-Catholic Network in the Cold War Diplomacy of Suharto’s Indonesia.” In Sercan Yolacan, Ameem Lufti, and Nisha Mathews eds. Strongmen and Informal Diplomats: Toward an Anthropology of International Relations (Abingdon: Routledge Special Issues as Books).

Editor Reviewed Publications

Nair, Deepak (2021) H-Diplo Teaching Roundtable XXII-50 on the Cold War in IR, https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/7914119/h-diplo-teaching-roundtable-xxii-50-cold-war-ir
Nair, Deepak (2016) “Learning Diplomacy: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam Diplomats in ASEAN” Trends in Southeast Asia Series, Issue 14 (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies: Singapore) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/learningdiplomacy/59047E999FAFFE31C8DF07B624E40F65
Nair, Deepak (2016) “A Strong Secretariat, a Strong ASEAN? A Re-evaluation,” ISEAS Perspectives (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies: Singapore). https://www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/ISEAS_Perspective_2016_8.pdf

Book Manuscript (in progress)

Architects of ‘Nothing’: The Cultural Production of Inaction in ASEAN.

Commentary

Nair, Deepak (2021) “ASEAN on Myanmar’s Coup: Revisiting Cold War Diplomacy on Cambodia,” New Mandala https://www.newmandala.org/asean-on-myanmars-coup-revisiting-cold-war-diplomacy-on-cambodia/

Service to the Profession

Associate Editor, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy (2021–present) https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/hjd
Member-at-Large (elected), Diplomatic Studies Section, International Studies Association (ISA) 2020– 2023.
https://www.isanet.org/ISA/Sections/DPLST
Associate Editor, Journal of Contemporary Southeast Asia (2009-2013)

Teaching

At the ANU, I teach a postgraduate seminar on International Relations in the Asia-Pacific (INTR8022). You may view the syllabus for this course here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373157730_SYLLABUS_NAIR_International_Relations_in_the_Asia-Pacific_ANU

I also teach A Sociology of Diplomacy (DIPL8020). Details: https://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/2025/course/dipl8020