Muhammad Shoaib Pervez received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Leiden University, Holland in 2010. He has won the prestigious Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan overseas scholarship for Ph.D. studies abroad (2007-2010). His Ph.D. dissertation is on “The socially constructed security dilemma between India-Pakistan: an exploration of norms for a security community”.

His monograph, “Security community in South-Asia: India-Pakistan” has been published by Routledge (2012, New York). This book has also been awarded the ‘National Outstanding Research Award for the year 2012’ by the Higher Education Commission, Government of Pakistan in 2014. In this book he has argued for a normative understanding of a India-Pakistan security community, which is precursor to peace in this most volatile nuclear region of the world. The security relationship between India and Pakistan is generally viewed through a neo-realist approach of International Relations. Treading on a different path, his book explains the rivalry of these countries by looking at the socio-cultural norms found at two levels, elites versus popular. The book describes how the rivalry between India and Pakistan is mostly centred on the elites of the two countries. It highlights the presence of a unique normative structure through social practices found at the popular level, and looks at how the common people of both India and Pakistan share many socio-cultural norms. Employing the theoretical framework of the social constructivist approach of International Relations as well as the methodology of critical discourse analysis, the book discusses how an effort can be made to develop the concept of a bottom-up security community, from the popular to the elite level, and the impact this would potentially have for India and Pakistan.

Pervez has also written articles in peer reviewed journals like Contemporary South Asia and Politics, Religion and Ideology. He has presented his papers in numerous conferences both local and abroad. Presently his interests lie in issues of security, strategic culture, identity politics and theories of International Relations particularly social constructivism. He is the post-doctoral Fulbright fellow for the year 2014-15 at SIPA, Columbia University. His working paper is “The strategic culture (re)-conceptualized: can cultural compulsions cause irrational strategic decisions?” He is working under the supervision of Prof. Robert Jervis.

Columbia email address: msp2169@columbia.edu