Poonam Khatana is currently a Ph.D. doctoral candidate and a Senior Research Fellow at Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.  Her doctoral thesis focuses on “The influx of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon: Economic and Political Implications, 2011-2016”. She wrote her M.Phil. dissertation on “Arab Christians in Israel: A Study of their Status and Problems”. Her research area of interest covers issues related to civil war and its negative externalities, refugee crisis, humanitarian assistance, migration, minorities, society, and politics in Lebanon and social and political reforms in West Asia.

She has contributed a chapter titled ‘The GCC’ in the edited volume of Persian Gulf 2016-17: India’s Relations with the Region, published by Pentagon Press, New Delhi. She is the recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) in Defence and Strategic Studies. In her Masters, She worked as a research intern with the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi and published some articles. They were later republished by Eurasia Review: A Journal of Analysis & News. She has co-authored an article on “The Rising Horizon: Dynamics of Indo-French Defence Relations” (2016) published by The Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), New Delhi. She is academically very active and has presented papers at various national and international conferences.

As a scholar on refugees and minorities with Policy Change Initiative, she will focus on the political-economic and security implications of the refugees and migrants on the host countries, challenges for the refugees in West Asia, role of India in providing humanitarian assistance, status and problems of minorities along with other social-political reforms occurring in West Asia.