Dr. Nishchal N. Pandey is Director of the Centre for South Asian Studies, Kathmandu, Convener of the Consortium of South Asian Think-Tanks and a well-known Nepali academic. He was also Executive Director of the Institute of Foreign Affairs under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal, where he worked for eight years (1998-2006). He was an Advisor to the National Planning Commission of Nepal (1997) and recently a member of the high-level task force on foreign policy under the chairmanship of the Foreign Minister (2018). Dr. Pandey was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore (2006-2007), a Visiting Fellow at the University of Hull (2009), and a Visiting Fellow at the German Institute of International and Security Affairs, Berlin (2013). A man of letters, Dr. Pandey is the author of several books on Nepal’s foreign policy and peace process and has edited 12 other books. His books include New Nepal: The Faultlines (SAGE, 2008) and India’s Northeastern Region (Manohar Publishers, 2008). In 2015, Dr Pandey participated in the ‘US-South Asia Leader Engagement Program on Terrorism as a Threat to Global Security’ organised by Harvard Kennedy School.