Darshana M. Baruah is a nonresident scholar with the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where she directs the Indian Ocean Initiative. Under the Initiative, Baruah convenes the annual Indo-Pacific Islands dialogue bringing together the islands of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific to highlight and discuss issues of importance to island nations. In her current role, Baruah conceptualized the Indian Ocean interactive map designed to convey the strategic importance of the region’s geographic features, trading routes, and maritime security. Baruah’s primary research focuses on maritime security in the Indo-Pacific and the role of islands in shaping great power competition. Her work examines the impact of maritime security in foreign policy engagements, naval strategy, maritime partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, and island agency in shaping great power competition. Baruah has spent time in think tanks in Delhi, Tokyo, Canberra, and Sydney before moving to Washington D.C. working on issues of maritime security, Indian Ocean, and the Indo-Pacific.

Baruah currently also holds an expert affiliate with the National Security College, Australian National University, and is a Non-Resident Fellow with the Sea Power Centre-Australia.

Previously, Baruah was a visiting resident fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Tokyo, working on a project exploring the role of islands in maritime security. Prior to that, Baruah was the associate director and senior research analyst at Carnegie India where she led the center’s initiative on maritime security. Baruah was also a visiting fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) Tokyo and a 2016 national parliamentary fellow at the Australian parliament and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute (Sydney), where her research was centered on India-Australia maritime collaboration in the Indo-Pacific.