Nitasha Kaul is a widely-travelled multidisciplinary academic, novelist, and public intellectual. She is Professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies, and Director of Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at the University of Westminster. She holds a BA Honours in Economics from SRCC, University of Delhi, an MSc (Economics) with a specialisation in Public Policy and a Joint PhD in Economics & Philosophy from University of Hull and has previously been a tenured Assistant Professor in Economics at the Bristol Business School and Associate Professor in Creative Writing in Bhutan.

Over the last three decades, she has published widely on themes relating to democracy, political economy, US politics, Hindu nationalism, Indian politics, misogyny, technology, AI/Artificial Intelligence, identity, foreign policy, rise of right-wing nationalism, non-lethal weapons, feminist epistemology, postcolonial theory, philosophy of economics, small states in geopolitics, linguistics and conflict, imperial history of the Himalayas, treaty-making, democratisation, policymaking in Bhutan, conflict in Kashmir, human rights, South Asian politics, communist politics in Kerala, and more. She is the author of over 155 publications including the academic monograph 'Imagining Economics Otherwise: encounters with identity/difference' (2007), two critically acclaimed works of political fiction (Man Asian Literary Prize shortlisted novel 'Residue', 2014 and 'Future Tense', 2020), four co-edited scholarly volumes ('Women and Kashmir', 2018; 'Can you hear Kashmiri Women Speak? Narratives of Resistance and Resilience', 2020; 'The Himalayas from its edges: networks, identities, and place-making', 2024; 'Contemporary Colonialities: Kurds and Kashmiris', 2025), book chapters in numerous critical and groundbreaking collections, plus peer-reviewed original research articles in high-impact journals across social sciences and humanities including International Studies Review, Review of International Studies, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, Critical Studies on Security, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Indian Politics & Policy, Journal of Labor and Society, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Security Dialogue, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Feminist Review, Journal of Asian Studies. She has led research projects funded by bodies including the AHRC and The British Academy, undertakes research assessment for major international bodies (European Research Council, Swedish Research Council, AHRC, ESRC, ISRF, Volkswagen Foundation, and several UKRI programs relating to democracy and AI, BRAID DOT, SALIENT and Turing AI Fellowships), and has reviewed research for 45+ journals and major publishers.

Her public engagement has included over 330+ invited lectures and keynotes at renowned universities and institutions around the world. In October 2019, she was invited to provide testimony on Human Rights in South Asia at the US Congress, and in 2025, she was invited to provide an expert report to the US Department of Justice on transnational repression. Her work and views have been featured in several hundred newsprint, television, and radio interviews to media including BBC World, BBC Newsnight, BBC News, CNN, Al Jazeera, DW, VOA, Time, The Washington Post, France 24, ABC, CNN.com, The Guardian, The Independent, Sky News, Financial Times, CBC, New York Times.

Originally from Kashmir, educated in India and the UK, and engaging with global audiences, she has significant expertise on the topics of democracy and authoritarianism, gender, security and geopolitics, human rights and conflict. Her work has provided original analytical accounts focused on tracing the links between democratic backsliding, political polarisation, protofascist trajectories, repression of rights, and insecurity; conceptual innovations such as "Hindutva-Development mix and the Modi myth", "Econonationalism", "Postcolonial Neoliberal Nationalism", "Electorally Legitimated Misogynist Authoritarian (ELMA)", "cartographic imaginaries", "sensory repression" have made key contributions to the studies of power and strategy in democracies turning to authoritarianism.

Her work on democratic backsliding is global and one aspect of this concerns the rise of the Hindu nationalism in India. As an established leading voice on the region, she has been at the receiving end of severe abuse and threats over the years. In 2014, she was denied entry to India by the BJP government without reason despite all valid documents and an official invitation from a non-BJP state government in the Indian state of Karnataka to a convention on constitutional values. Subsequently in 2025, the government revoked her Overseas Citizenship of India status denying her access to family, terming her work 'anti-national' without providing any specific evidence. The escalating actions of the Modi-led BJP government against her paradoxically validate her analysis while providing a personal insight into transnational repression. She continues writing and speaking globally, based on decades of research on the defining social, political, and economics transformations of our time.