Political Science

Main research and teaching areas

• International relations​
• Political theory
• South Asia

Biography

Ted Svensson has worked at the Department since 2009. He obtained his PhD at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. His thesis was, in 2011, awarded the Political Studies Association's Lord Bryce prize for best dissertation in international relations and/or comparative politics. Ted's research interests include state formation, identity politics, cultural heritage and rituals, contemporary South Asia and issues broadly related to constitutive moments. 

Ted is, since January 2022, Director of SASNET. Until May 2023, he was Editor of Cooperation and Conflict.

He is currently supervising Lars Vetle Handeland's PhD project on decolonisation and international authority, Simon Stattin's PhD project on how an outside to politics and the political might be theorised, Therese Boje Mortensen's PhD project on NGOs as duty bearers of human rights, Mathieu Mignot's PhD project on the afterlives of hegemons and hegemonic succession and Pär Altermark's PhD project on urban spatial order and disorder.

Ted was until recently member of the research program STANCE, which was funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond). STANCE, which came to an end in October 2021, was broadly concerned with the ways in which a seemingly singular notion of the state developed during the 'long 19th century'.

Between January 2017 and December 2022, he was (with Martin Hall and Annika Bergman Rosamond) carrying out a project on the politics of world heritage. The project was funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and explored how UNESCO's World Heritage—prescribed as a solution to a range of global problems—is, on the one hand, often entwined with national and international conflicts and, on the other hand, allows for a plurality of global imaginaries to be articulated. 

Ted is project leader of the project 'Divine Ganges, Profane Development: Sacred Geographies and the Governing of Pollution', which studies the tension between notions of the Ganges that stem from religious and secular conceptions of it. The project started in January 2020 and is funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). The other members of the project are Catarina Kinnvall, Sammyh Khan and Yashpal Jogdand.

List of Publications

Monograph
Svensson, Ted, 2013. Production of Postcolonial India and Pakistan: Meanings of Partition. London: Routledge. (http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415509077/) 

Edited volume
Kinnvall, Catarina and Svensson, Ted (eds.), 2014. Governing Borders and Security: The Politics of Connectivity and Dispersal. London: Routledge. (http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415704212/) 

Articles and book chapters
Kinnvall, Catarina and Svensson, Ted, 2023. 'Trauma, Home, and Geopolitical Bordering: A Lacanian Approach to the COVID-19 Crisis'. International Studies Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 3. (https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqad053) 

Cornell, Agnes and Svensson, Ted, 2023. 'Colonial Origins of Modern Bureaucracy? India and the Professionalization of the British Civil Service'. Governance, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 533-553. (https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12683)

Svensson, Ted, 2022. 'Transcending Antagonism in South Asia: Advancing Agonistic Peace through the Partition Museum'. Peacebuilding. (https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2022.2154121)

Kinnvall, Catarina and Svensson, Ted, 2022. 'Exploring the Populist "Mind": Anxiety, Fantasy, and Everyday Populism'. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 526-542. (https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221075925)

Kustermans, Jorg; Svensson, Ted; Costa López, Julia; Blasenheim, Tracey; and Hoffmann, Alvina, 2022. 'Ritual and Authority in World Politics'. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 2-30.
(https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2021.1975647)

Svensson, Ted, 2021. 'Decolonisation and the Erosion of the Imperial Idea', in de Carvalho, Benjamin; Costa López, Julia; and Leira, Halvard (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations. London: Routledge. (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351168960)

Svensson, Ted, 2021. 'South Asian Nationalisms: Concluding Reflections'. Asian Ethnology, vol. 80, no. 1, pp. 227-238. (https://asianethnology.org/articles/2332)

Kinnvall, Catarina and Svensson, Ted, 2021. 'Differentiated Citizenship: Multiculturalism, Secularism and India's Foreign Policy', in Schmidt, Johannes Dragsbaek and Chakrabarti, Shantanu (eds.) The Interface of Domestic and International Factors in India's Foreign Policy. London: Routledge. (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003122302)

Svensson, Ted, 2021. 'Curating the Partition: Dissonant Heritage and Indian Nation Building'. International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 216-232. (https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2020.1781679)

Aalberts, Tanja; Kurowska, Xymena; Leander, Anna; Mälksoo, Maria; Heath-Kelly, Charlotte; Lobato, Luisa; and Svensson, Ted, 2020. 'Rituals of World Politics: On (Visual) Practices Disordering Things'. Critical Studies on Security, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 240-264. (https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2020.1792734)

Kinnvall, Catarina and Svensson, Ted, 2018. 'Misrecognition and the Indian State: The Desire for Sovereign Agency'. Review of International Studies, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 902-921. (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210518000311)

Svensson, Ted, 2018. 'De-Centering Federal Origins: India and the Contested Appropriation of Federal Democracy', in Bartelson, Jens; Hall, Martin; and Teorell, Jan (eds.) De-Centering State Making: Comparative and International Perspectives. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. (https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788112994.00011)

Svensson, Ted, 2018. 'Pollution and Purity: Caste-Based Discrimination and the Mobilisation of Dalit Sameness', in Agius, Christine and Keep, Dean (eds.) The Politics of Identity: Place, Space and Discourse. Manchester: Manchester University Press. (http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526110244/)

Khan, Sammyh S.; Svensson, Ted; Jogdand, Yashpal A.; and Liu, James H., 2017. 'Lessons from the Past for the Future: The Definition and Mobilisation of Hindu Nationhood by the Hindu Nationalist Movement of India'. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, vol. 5, no. 2., pp. 477-511. (https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v5i2.736)

Kinnvall, Catarina and Svensson, Ted, 2017. 'Ontological Security and the Limits to a Common World: Subaltern Pasts and the Inner-Worldliness of the Tablighi Jama'at'. Postcolonial Studies, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 333-352. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2017.1378080)

Svensson, Ted, 2014. 'Humanising the Subaltern: Unbounded Caste and the Limits of a Rights Regime'. Third World Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 9, pp. 1691-1708. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2014.970861)

Kinnvall, Catarina and Svensson, Ted, 2014. 'Bordering the Indefinite Nation: Pakistan, the Taliban and Desecuritised Religion', in Kinnvall, Catarina and Svensson, Ted (eds.) Governing Borders and Security: The Politics of Connectivity and Dispersal. London: Routledge.

Svensson, Ted, 2013. 'At the Threshold of Order: Responses to the Mumbai Attacks'. Global Society, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 283-298. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2013.790790)

Svensson, Ted, 2012. 'Stories of Catastrophe, Traces of Trauma: Indian State Formation and the Borders of Becoming'. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 253-265. (https://doi.org/10.1177/0304375412450843) 

Svensson, Ted, 2012. 'Regional Security Governance: The Case of South Asia', in Breslin, Shaun and Croft, Stuart (eds.) Comparative Regional Security Governance. London: Routledge.

Kinnvall, Catarina and Svensson, Ted, 2010. 'Hindu Nationalism, Diaspora Politics and Nation-Building in India'. Australian Journal of International Affairs, vol. 64, no. 3, pp. 274-292. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357711003736451)

Svensson, Ted, 2010. 'Fixing the Elusive: India and the Foreignness of Terror', in Siniver, Asaf (ed.) International Terrorism Post-9/11: Comparative Dynamics and Responses. London: Routledge.

Svensson, Ted, 2009. 'Frontiers of Blame: India’s "War on Terror"'. Critical Studies on Terrorism, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 27-44. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150902752606)

Other
Björkdahl, Annika; Hall, Martin and Svensson, Ted, 2019. 'Everyday International Relations: Editors' Introduction'. Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 123-130. (https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836719845834)