An author, strategic analyst, professor and consultant on space policy, international relations, alternate futures, ethnic identity and great power politics. Dr. Namrata Goswami brought expertise into any room she stepped into, and her accomplishments cannot be understated. She has consulted, taught and delivered lectures at a wide variety of institutions and entities, such as the Aerospace Corporation, Purdue University, Emory University, the U.S. Space Force, USPACOM, USSOCOM, India’s National Defence College, as well as several other academic and policy research organizations globally. Moreover, she was selected to be the first representative from South Asia in the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies NATO Partnership for Peace Consortium (PfPC), “Emerging Security Challenges Working Group.” Dr. Goswami was also awarded an Executive Leadership Certificate sponsored by Harvard Kennedy School of Government, National Defense University (NDU), and the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS). It seems only fitting to talk about such an accomplished woman in living history during women’s history month.

Dr. Namrata Goswami earned her doctorate in international relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and began her career working for the MP Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, a think tank sponsored by India’s Ministry of Defense (MOD). She worked there for nearly a decade and was awarded several opportunities for visiting fellowships while she worked there, everywhere from the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway to the La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia and the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

In 2012, Dr. Goswami was selected to serve as a Jennings-Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Washington D.C. where she studied India-China border issues. She was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Fellowship for her research efforts at the same time. After founding her own strategy and policy consulting firm, she was granted the prestigious MINERVA grant from the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s (OSD) Office for exploring great power competition in outer space. Dr. Goswami also secured a contract with Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), for working on a project entitled “ISIS in South and Southeast Asia”.

Her research and publications on China and its space program did not go unnoticed, and in April 2019, Dr. Goswami testified before the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China’s space program.

Dr. Goswami also wrote and edited several books to include: The Naga Ethnic Movement for a Separate Homeland: Stories from the Field, India’s National Security and Counter-Insurgency, Asia 2030, and Asia 2030: The Unfolding Future. The co-authored book, entitled Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space was published in October 2020.

Dr. Goswami’s feats cannot be overstated. As a regular participant in several think tanks, as a faculty at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University and lending her brilliant mind to other projects along the way, she is not only a woman worth admiring but a woman worth following into the future!