Shivshankar Menon is a Distinguished Fellow at CSEP, Visiting Professor at Ashoka University and Chair of the Ashoka Centre for China Studies. Menon served as National Security Advisor to the Indian Prime Minister (2010-2014); Foreign Secretary of India (2006-2009); and as Ambassador and High Commissioner of India to Israel (1995-1997), Sri Lanka (1997-2000), China (2000-2003) and Pakistan (2003-2006). He has served in the mission to the IAEA in Vienna and in the Department of Atomic Energy in Mumbai.

He was also a Distinguished Fellow with Brookings India. He has published Choices: Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy in 2016 and India and Asian Geopolitics: The Past, Present (Brookings Press USA, & Penguin Random House India) in April 2021.

Menon has been a Richard Wilhelm Fellow at the Center for International Studies at MIT and Fisher Family Fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard University. In 2010, he was chosen by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” He attended the Scindia School, Gwalior and St. Stephens College of the University of Delhi, where he studied ancient Indian history and Chinese. He speaks Chinese and some German.