Sara Frumento

Sara Frumento is a DPhil candidate in Area Studies (South Asia) and a Clarendon Scholar at Hertford College, University of Oxford. She previously completed a BA in European Social and Political Studies at University College London (UCL) and an MPhil in Global and Area Studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford. Before beginning her doctoral studies, she worked in several think tanks and international organisations, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Sara’s interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of political geography, international relations, and anthropology, with a regional focus on South Asia. Her DPhil project, Rethinking Small State Sovereignty through Hyper-Agentic Elites: Maldivian, Nepali, and Sri Lankan Agency in the Context of Sino-Indian Hegemonic Competition in South Asia, advances a Gramscian account of small state agency and sovereignty under conditions of asymmetry. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, she explores how elites in small South Asian states discursively and materially navigate Sino-Indian great power rivalry, articulating alternative and post-Westphalian forms of sovereignty grounded in local political, cultural, and spatial practices.

Hertford College
Supervisor: Dr. Kate Sullivan de Estrada