Ted Svensson

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, imperialism, identity politics, cultural heritage and rituals, contemporary South Asia and issues broadly related to constitutive moments. 

Ted was, until February 2025, Assistant Head of Department (with a focus on the PhD programme and postdoctoral researchers). 

In 2022 and 2023, he was Director of SASNET and, until May 2023, 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, 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.

From January 2024, Ted (as PI) will—together with Agustín Goenaga and Sarai-Anne Ikenze—work on a three-year project titled 'Imperial Capacity: Studying the Impacts of Colonial Bureaucracies on State Development'. The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and attends to the evolution of the colonial bureaucracies of the British Empire in Africa and the Caribbean from 1854 to 1945 and their impact on the development of state institutions in the United Kingdom and in the colonial territories after decolonisation. 

Ted is also project leader and member of '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, will end in March 2025 and is funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). The other members of the project are Catarina Kinnvall, Sammyh Khan and Yashpal Jogdand.

Ted was previously member of the research programme 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. 

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, 2024. '"Hunger for Certainty": Misrecognition, Masculinity and Agentic Action in India's and Russia's Desires for Neocolonial Subjecthood'. Global Discourse, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 116-140. (https://doi.org/10.1332/20437897Y2023D000000032)

Svensson, Ted, 2024. 'Transcending Antagonism in South Asia: Advancing Agonistic Peace through the Partition Museum'. Peacebuilding, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 65-81. (https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2022.2154121)

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)

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)