R. Kannan is currently an adjunct faculty at the University of Georgia School of Law, where he teaches a course on international organizations and serves as a Dean Rusk International Law Centre Council member. In a nearly three-decades-long career, he served as a political and peacekeeping official with the United Nations in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Kosovo--all breakaway countries from Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia. Kannan's biographies of the Dravidian icons, Anna (C.N. Annadurai) and MGR (M.G. Ramachandran), have also been brought out by Penguin Random House India. He writes and talks about Indian politics and international affairs.