Born and raised in Georgia, Ananya Agustin Malhotra is the daughter of immigrants from Obando, Bulacan, Philippines and New Delhi, India. Raised in a bi-cultural and interfaith household, Ananya is deeply motivated by her mother and father’s family histories to advocate for a more just and peaceful future United States foreign policy.
Ananya’s interests lie at the intersection of global history, international law, and peace and security issues. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University with a concentration in the School of Public and International Affairs. Her undergraduate thesis, based on oral histories with New Mexican Downwinders, explored the human legacies of the 1945 Trinity Test and the US nuclear age. At Princeton, Ananya served as president of the Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources, and Education (SHARE) Peer Program, where she was first introduced to survivor-centered advocacy.
As a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, Ananya earned an MPhil in modern European history with distinction, studying the histories of empire and anticolonialism in shaping international order. Her dissertation research explored the role of epistemology in the global intellectual history of decolonization and has been published in Global Histories and the Journal of the History of Ideas blog. For the last four years, Ananya has advocated for nuclear disarmament and risk reduction through her research, scholarship, and public commentary. Ananya has worked in Washington, DC at the Nuclear Threat Initiative and at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft to advance policies aimed at fostering a safer and more peaceful world.
Ananya has also worked or held internships at the Logische Phantasie Lab, UN Women, and the European Roma Rights Centre, and is a member of the Younger Generation Leaders Network on Euro-Atlantic Security (YGLN) and the British American Security Information Council’s Emerging Voices Network. She has authored and co-authored several policy briefs and has collaborated on projects with Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. Some of her other writing and work can be found in Inkstick Media, Antonym Magazine, the American Oxonian, and the Oxford Review of Books.
