Nirupama Rao, the former Indian ambassador to the U.S. and China, has accepted a fellowship at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. Rao's one-year appointment as the Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellow with the Brown-India Initiative begins January.

 "I look forward to my year at Brown University with great anticipation. The India Initiative at Brown's Watson Institute has provided a needed and valued focus on the study of contemporary India," Rao said in a statement. "I am thrilled to contribute to scholarship on India's global outlook and its foreign policy priorities and challenges."

 Ashutosh Varshney, Director of the Initiative, said that Rao is a popular figure and has accomplished quite a lot during her 40-year diplomatic career. Rao has always been applauded for her intellectual approach to diplomacy.

"Having served as India's ambassador to the US and China and also as the country's Foreign Secretary, she has accumulated invaluable diplomatic experience, knowledge, and insight. She will add greatly to our collective life at the India Initiative," Varshney said in the statement.

At Brown, Rao intends to work on a book about the impact of new media on government and deliver a lecture in the fall of 2014.

Rao served as the Indian ambassador to the U.S. from September 2011 to November 2013. Prior to that, she served as India's Foreign Secretary (highest office in the Indian Foreign Service) and has held various diplomatic posts in China, Russia and Latin America.

Rao was the first woman spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs and India's first female ambassador to China from 2006 to 2009.