Dr. Sanjay Srivastava is Professor at Political Science department of Banaras Hindu University. He teaches international relations and his research interests include soft power, public diplomacy, strategic communication, conflict resolution and peace and India’s foreign policy. He also takes part in curriculum development, research supervision and administrative activities of the university. Currently, Prof. Srivastava is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in School of Communication, American University, Washington D.C. The research component of Dr. Srivastava’s Fulbright project aims to evaluate the public diplomacy strategies of America and India oriented towards peacebuilding in post 9/11 Arab world and South Asia, respectively and the teaching component examines the nuances of Indian PD under the proactive lead of Prime Minister Modi to claim the rightful status of a rising power 

Recently, Prof. Srivastava was ICCR Chair of Contemporary Indian Studies at Yerevan State University, Armenia (2013-14), where he was involved in public diplomacy (PD) activities and delivered lectures on various issues including India’s foreign policy and PD programs and the prestigious ICCR Lecture. He contributes to the CPD Blog of USC. He has led many major research projects; the recent one is on evaluating effectiveness of public diplomacy programs of India, a first research of its type using experimental research design. This project entails in-depth study of India’s public diplomacy including PD 2.0 and examines the effectiveness of almost all the programs of Indian PD such as Distinguished Lecture Series, India Perspective, You tube videos, India-Africa, India Is and PD 2.0 efforts such as XPD Division’s page on twitter and facebook. Prof. Srivastava was awarded UGC’s Research Award (2004) given to the meritorious teachers. He was Salzburg Seminar Fellow (2005) and has participated in several national and international conferences. He has also published on issues of international relations in various compendiums and national and international journals. He has been visiting professor to many reputed institutions including Diplomatic Academy of Armenia and the Faculty of International Relations at Yerevan State University.