Melanie Hanif is a Research Fellow at the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies and a PhD candidate at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She studied political science in Germany and Spain and specialized in international relations. Before joining the GIGA, she worked for several months at the German Foreign Office where she organized training programmes for international diplomats. Currently she works within a project which investigates the rise of regional powers in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East (Regional Powers Network). The main focus of her dissertation project is regional order in South Asia with a special view on India’s role within its neighbourhood. At the IDSA she will be researching regional preferences and mutual beliefs in India-Pakistan relations and their implications on South Asian regional order.