Internationalism is typically studied as an elite and institutional project; its history written from the viewpoint of either states or large multilateral organisations. What happens, however, when we flip our perspective and study internationalism from the vantage point of those at the interstate system’s margins? My interdisciplinary PhD thesis did precisely that by examining the international politics of the Naga Indigenous community in Northeast India.
Nagas have campaigned for self-determination since 1947, when Naga leaders declared independence from India. India has consistently forestalled these efforts by asserting that the ‘Naga issue’ is a domestic Indian concern. In response, Naga actors have repeatedly made claims on and to ‘the international’ in order to legitimate demands for collective rights and political recognition. My PhD investigated these practices from 1946 to 2022. I wrote a history of Naga intellectual thought across this period, exploring how nationalist demands have been re-articulated at different moments in response to shifting domestic and international conditions. I conducted archival research in Europe and India, alongside analysis of Naga social media and interviews with Naga human rights activists.
I chart a shift in the nature of the Nagas’ geopolitical claim, from mid-twentieth-century calls for Naga statehood, towards recent calls for Naga Indigenous self-determination outside the nation-state. The core of my argument is that internationalism has been integral to the construction of Naga national identities. I call for scholars to pay greater attention to the internationalist practices of Indigenous, minority, and stateless communities who are typically absent from histories of internationalism. My work shows how communities at the margins of the international order can tell us much about the so-called norms of inter-state politics, while offering important insights into the future of geopolitics.
The fellowship will maximise the impact of my PhD research for (1) Naga communities; (2) international human rights policy professionals; and (3) interdisciplinary social science scholars. I will: (1) conduct a research communication trip to Nagaland; (2) collaborate with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) to write policy materials on Naga self-determination; (3) submit journal articles based upon chapters of my PhD.
Research Area (1-6):
RA5, Global Order and Security
Publications:
Manby, A., McConnell, F., Cano, M. and Moua, G. (in press) ‘Tracing twentieth-century histories of Hmong international advocacy against forced displacement and state-sponsored persecution’, in Fink, C., Biró, A., Jackson-Prece, J. and Lennox, C. (eds.) Routledge Handbook of the International Protection of Minorities 1919–2001. Abingdon: Routledge.
McConnell, F. and Manby, A. (in press) ‘Geographies of international law and diplomacy’, in Jeffrey, A. and Klostermkamp, S. (eds.) Research Handbook on Legal Geography. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Manby, A. (2026) ‘Geographies of Naga (Inter)nationalism: The subaltern geopolitics of Angami Zapu Phizo’, Global Studies Quarterly.
Manby, A. (2025) ‘Archiving and the aspirational politics of self-determination: Non-state claims to legitimacy amongst the Nagas in Northeast India’, Journal of Historical Geography, 88, pp. 43–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2024.11.007
Manby, A. and McConnell, F. (2024) ‘Digital geographies of diplomacy: The uneven digital mediation of space and encounters at the UN Human Rights Council’, Political Geography, pp. 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103147
Loong, S., Manby, A. and McConnell, F. (2023) ‘Rethinking self-determination: Colonial and relational geographies in Asia’, Territory, Politics, Governance, pp. 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2023.2232410
McConnell, F. and Manby, A. (2024) ‘Digital diplomacy of transnational and non-governmental actors’, in Bjola, C. and Manor, I. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Digital Diplomacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 383–400. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192859198.013.21
McConnell, F., Manby, A., Monje Cano, M. and Bunche, R. (2020) Compromised Space and Undiplomatic Immunity. Brussels: UNPO.