I am a rogue political scientist. My research lies at the intersection between political anthropology, postcolonial theory, social history, and cultural studies. I study South Asia, particularly India, and its entanglements with the wider Inter-Asian and Indian Ocean worlds.
I completed my M.A., MPhil, and PhD in political science at Yale University, and my B.A. in economics at Grinnell College. My doctoral dissertation received the Sardar Patel Award for the best dissertation in a US university on any aspect of modern South Asia. I have held prestigious fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG).
My forthcoming book with Stanford University Press, Negotiating Leviathan: Making States and Tribes in Modern India, draws on fifteen years of in-depth archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. I have also authored over a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles and a roughly equal number of book chapters in addition to co-editing three journal special issues and three volumes.
I am currently a co-investigator on a five-year European Research Council (ERC) project “India’s Politics in its Vernaculars.” I also co-convene the Indian Ocean Working Group at Georgetown University, Qatar, and over 2022-23, a series of symposia on Africa and the Indian Ocean at the Africa Institute, Sharjah. Additionally, I serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Asia and on the advisory board of the Georgetown India Initiative, and as politics and government editor for Culturico, and associate editor of Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish