Veda Vaidyanathan is an Associate Fellow in Foreign Policy and Security. Veda is a multidisciplinary researcher who specialises in Asia-Africa interactions. A 2022-23 Fung Global Fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University, she is also affiliated to the Harvard University Asia Center and the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi. Veda brings a comparative perspective to her work, examining Chinese and Indian engagements in Africa from the grassroots.

She holds a Ph.D. from the Center for African Studies at the University of Mumbai. As the inaugural recipient of the ICS – Harvard-Yenching Institute fellowship in India, she spent a year at the School of International Studies at Peking University, China, and the HYI at Harvard. She has lectured at the Australian National University, Boston College, Addis Ababa University, and presented findings in various global platforms, including to the European Commission in Brussels, the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi. She was also part of the Indian delegation to the 17th Russia-India-China academic trilateral in Beijing and has a number of publications.