Itty Abraham

Professor Itty Abraham joined the School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS) in July 2022.  He moved to Tempe from the National University of Singapore (NUS) where he was head of the Department of Southeast Asian Studies.  He specializes in the study of the politics of technology with a special focus on India, Asia, and the Global South. 

Prof. Abraham’s academic training began with a bachelor’s degree in in economics (first class) from Loyola College, Madras, followed by a PhD in international relations and political theory from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After his PhD, he was appointed program officer (South Asia and Southeast Asia) and program director (Global Security and Cooperation) at the Social Science Research Council, New York. In his twelve years at the SSRC, he was closely involved in the crafting of post-Cold War area studies, especially helping advance the globalization of social science knowledge production.  He spent a year at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University while competing his first book, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State (Zed Books, 1998).  He left the Council to join the newly formed East-West Center in Washington DC and taught as an adjunct associate professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University.  In 2006, he moved to the University of Texas to become director of the UT South Asia Institute with a tenured appointment in Government and Asian Studies.  He left Austin for NUS in 2012. 

Prof Abraham’s expertise joins critical international relations theory with science and technology studies (STS).  He has a special interest in the study of nuclear power.  His current project is a wide-ranging study of the politics of technology, written “as if the field of STS was invented in the Global South.”  He has published two single-authored books, edited and co-edited three books and two journal collections, as well as numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.  Some of his recent writings include the examination of civilizational discourses in Indian foreign policy, a postcolonial history of the UN Refugee Convention, and the impact of digital technologies on citizenship and nationalism.  He has received awards and grants from the National Science Foundation, US Institute of Peace, Ford and MacArthur Foundations, among others, and was a senior Fulbright-Nehru scholar (2011).  His teaching includes courses on nuclear power, inequality, STS and postcolonial theory, and, migration and refugees.  

Prof Abraham is a firm believer in the power of engaged scholarship to change the way we understand the world and be a force for progressive change. 

For more information about his published work see his academia.edu page.  https://asu.academia.edu/IttyAbraham and Google Scholar.