Associate Senior Policy Fellow
India’s foreign policy, South Asia security issues, Indo-Pacific dynamics, maritime security, climate security, economic trends in Asia
French and English
Dr. Melissa Levaillant is a associate senior policy fellow with the Asia Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to joining ECFR, she worked as deputy director of research and studies at the French Institute for Higher Defence Studies (IHEDN), where she focused on maritime issues. Levaillant has also worked as a policy officer for South Asia at the General Directorate for International Relations and Strategy (French Ministry of Armed Forces) and a visiting fellow at the South Asia Institute of the Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore.
Levaillant holds a PhD from Sciences Po Paris. Her dissertation focused on the sociology of Indian diplomacy, with the Gulf as a case study. She has published academic and policy papers on India’s foreign policy and security issues in the Indopacific. She has recently co-edited an anthology which brings together extra-Western texts from the pre-colonial period on the concepts of peace and security: Paix et sécurité. Une anthologie décentrée. Levaillant also has significant experience in the private sector, and she has co-founded a consultancy company specialized in the field of social and human sciences, SELDON Conseil.
Disaster relief efforts in the Indo-Pacific are quickly becoming a space for geopolitical competition, especially between the US and China. Europeans should watch closely, working to showcase their own usefulness to the region while helping to reduce its dependencies on China
