Uniyal Krittika

		Krittika Uniyal is a doctoral researcher at GEDT since September 2019. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology Honors from the University of Delhi, a postgraduate diploma in Environment and Development from Ambedkar University Delhi, and a master's in politics (with specialization in International Relations) from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Before joining GEDT, she was a research assistant at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, Nepal. Here she was a part of the Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation and Development Initiative, a flagship trans-boundary collaborative program between China, India, and Nepal. Her research focused on trans-border trade in the Kailash Sacred Landscape, which aimed to assist the involved country's policymakers and stakeholders in exploring and developing the trans-border trade potential in the region.

Research

Krittika’s Ph.D. research is titled, Challenging the Status Quo: Critical Geopolitics of the Belt and Road Initiative through the Trans-Himalayas of Nepal and Tibet Autonomous Region.

In recent years, the Belt and Road Initiative has raised important scholarly questions concerning China’s relationship with its neighbors, China’s role in the international system, and the very understanding of the nature and evolution of the international system and international cooperation. In her research, she argues, that while this development or evolution of China's growth is a crucial scholarly task, it should be done with acknowledging the importance given to the Chinese value systems and culture in the nature of its growth and development, as culture and value systems play an essential part in determining the behavior of nation-states in the international system. She studies the discourses that emerge out of such interactions, and in contributing to this, her research examines the discourses of critique and justification concerning Nepal’s participation in China’s BRI. For which she borrows extensively from the non-Western IR theories emerging specifically from China and largely from the Global South to support her case.

For this research, she has been awarded the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship (2019-22) and an International Organization research stipend (2020) for young scholars from the Swiss Network for International Studies.

Interest

Mme. Krittika Uniyal

Doctorante

B301
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