Dr. Mallika Joseph

Regional Coordinator

Mallika Joseph is a Senior Fellow at Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP). She is also an Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS). Until December 2020, she served as Policy Adviser and Regional Coordinator for the Asia Pacific at the Hague-based Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).

Before joining GPPAC in January 2018, she was a Professor and Head at the Department of National Security Studies, Central University of Jammu. Earlier, she served as the Executive Director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Sri Lanka, from January 2012 to December 2014, and prior to that, she was the Director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi. She also served as the Deputy Director at the Australia India Institute @Delhi, a subsidiary of the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 2015-2016. She is the first woman to assume these positions.

Mallika specialises in security sector reform (SSR) and is one of the 24 experts selected worldwide and inducted into the UN Roster of SSR Experts in 2009; she is one of the two experts from Asia. Between January and September 2011, she was with the Geneva-based International Security Sector Advisory Team (ISSAT) of the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), designing, planning, and delivering SSR courses to senior practitioners.

Earlier in 2006 and 2007, she was part of a five-member high-level technical team from the UK that visited Guyana, offering assistance in SSR programming in the country. She served as the Co-chair of GPPAC’s Human Security Working Group, which resulted in the development of a Manual on Human Security. In March 2017, she was part of the team from GPPAC that organised a training seminar for the Colombian army and police on comprehensive and human security.

She is part of numerous global and regional networks working on sustainable development goals, gender, security sector reform, human security, countering violent extremism, conflict prevention, regional architectures, and global governance.

She has a Ph.D. in international relations and has worked on various issues relating to South Asian security. Some of her edited volumes include Rise of China and India: Implications for the Asia Pacific; India’s Economic Growth: Opportunities and Challenges for the Region; Demography in South Asia: Implications for the Regional and Global Political Narratives; and Reintroducing Human Security in South Asia. Her latest work includes South Asian Perspectives on Sustainable Development and Gender Equality and a special edition of Peace Prints that examined the multifaceted impact of COVID-19 on women in South Asia. She is currently working on the role of civil society in climate action, exploring the linkages between climate change, conflict, peacebuilding, and civic action.