Nevada Center on Foreign Relations and College of Liberal Arts, UNLV invites the community to their upcoming lecture on how India is making its place in the world.

Dr. Alyssa Ayers, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations will be the featured speaker at the UNLV’s College of Liberal Arts’ University Forum Lecture Series on Monday, April 15^that 7:30 PM.  The lecture hall is room 135 of the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, Harry Reid Center at UNLV.

Dr. Ayers talk will focus on how the tension between India’s inward-focused past and its ongoing integration into the global economy will shape its trajectory.  Dr. Ayres considers how a fiercely independent India seeks its place as a leading power, and how the United States should respond.  A rising India wants a seat at the table of global powers and is ready to set its own terms on everything from defense to climate to trade.

RSVP is required.  Please email austin.dean@unlv.edu to reserve your spot.

About Alyssa Ayers, Ph.D. – Dr. Alyssa Ayres is a senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She came to CFR after serving as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 2010 to 2013. Her book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018, and was recently selected by the Financial Times for its “Summer 2018: Politics” list. In 2015, she served as the project director for the CFR-sponsored independent task force on U.S.-India relations, and from 2014 to 2016, as the project director for an initiative on the new geopolitics of China, India, and Pakistan supported by the MacArthur Foundation. During her tenure at the State Department in the Barack Obama administration, Ayres covered all issues across a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and provided policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates.

From 2007 to 2008, she served as special assistant to the undersecretary of state for political affairs as a CFR international affairs fellow.

Her book on nationalism, culture, and politics in Pakistan, Speaking Like a State, was published worldwide by Cambridge University Press in 2009 and received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies book prize for 2011–2012. She has co-edited three books on India and Indian foreign policy: Power Realignments in Asia, India Briefing: Takeoff at Last?, and India Briefing: Quickening the Pace of Change. Ayres has been awarded numerous fellowships and has received four group or individual Superior Honor Awards for work at the State Department.  She speaks fluent Hindi and Urdu, and in the mid-1990s worked as an interpreter for the International Committee of the Red Cross. She received an AB from Harvard College and an MA and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.