CV
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
2011-present W3 (Full) Professor and Chair of State and Democracy, Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) and the Institute for Political Sciences, University of Göttingen, Germany.
2018-19; 2021-22 Founding Co-Director, Merian-Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies (ICAS:MP), Delhi. An international institute of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
2012-2016 Director, CETREN (Transregional Research Institute), University of Göttingen, Germany.
2012-2014 Director, Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Göttingen, Germany.
2006-2011 Associate Professor (tenured), Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
2008-2010 Consultant, Inter-Asia Program, Social Science Research Council (SSRC), New York.
2006-2008 Senior Advisor for International Collaboration, Social Science Research Council (SSRC), New York.
Spring 2006 Rustgi Faculty Fellow in South Asian Studies, Yale Council of International and Area Studies and Department of Political Science, Yale University.
2000-2006 Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
1999-2000 Rockefeller Humanities Postdoctoral Residential Fellow, International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University.
EDUCATION
1999 Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Pennsylvania.
Fields of specialization: Comparative Politics; International Relations; South Asian studies.
Committeee: Ian Lustick (chair), Anne Norton, Sumathi Ramaswamy.
Dissertation awarded the UCLA-Sardar Patel Award for the best U.S. doctoral dissertation on modern India, 2000.
1992 A.B. in Government, Dartmouth College.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Institutional leadership and advisory roles
• Co-Founder, “New Civilizationalisms” International Research Network. With Thomas Blom Hansen.
• Founding Co-Director, Merian-Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies (ICAS:MP), Delhi. An international institute of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
• Director, Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen
• Member, University Steering Committee for the Excellence Initiative, University of Göttingen.
• Founding Co-Director, CETREN, University of Göttingen. A transregional research institute funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
• Member, Advisory Board, “Security in Context” Program, Arab Council of the Social Sciences.
• Member, International Advisory Board, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
• Senior Advisor and Steering Committee Member, Inter-Asia Program, SSRC, New York.
• Member, International Advisory Team, World Social Science Fellows Programme, International Social Science Council-UNESCO, Paris.
• Consultant, SSRC-US Department of Education evaluation of Title VI funded area studies centers for South Asia, Middle East, and Eurasia studies.
• Lead Researcher, Transregional Virtual Research Institute (TVRI) on Media, Activism, and the New Political, SSRC.
• Graduate Program Director, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
• Member, University Research and Ethics Committee, UMass-Amherst.
• Member, Women’s Studies Executive Committee, UMass-Amherst.
• Executive Board Member, Asian/Asian American Studies.
• Co-Founder, Five College InterAsia Network.
Review and selection activities
• Deputy Panel Chair, Advanced Research Grant Competition, European Research Council (panel details redacted).
• Directorship Search Committee, Human Sciences Section, Max Planck Society, Germany.
• Search Committee, Chair of Development Economics, University of Göttingen.
• Member, APSA Congressional Fellowship Selection Committee (India).
• Fulbright India Fellowship Selection Committee.
• Search Committee for Multi-Member Hiring Initiative, UMass-Amherst.
• Search Committee for External Departmental Chair, UMass-Amherst.
• Search Committee for Horwitz Chair in Latin American Studies, UMass-Amherst.
• Editorial boards: Critical Asian Studies, Ethnoscapes, Contemporary South Asia, “Studies in Contemporary South Asia” book series, Palgrave.
• Manuscript reviews: Cornell University Press, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Duke University Press, Routledge Press, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Research, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Journal of Asian Studies, Theory and Event, India Review, Radical History Review, Critical Asian Studies, Asian Security, Contributions to Indian Sociology, SAMAJ.
• Grant reviews: National Science Foundation-USA, Swiss National Science Foundation,), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (DSF), Humboldt Foundation, Volkswagen Foundation, European Reserch Council
Workshops organized
• Co-organizer (with Thomas Blom Hansen, Stanford University and Lalit Vachani, University of Göttingen), Understanding New Hindutva, Göttingen.
• Co-organizer (with Paula Chakravartty and Gianpaolo Baiocchi, NYU), Lineages of the People: Embedded and transregional histories of contemporary populism, Göttingen.
• Co-organizer (with Sarai-CSDS and SSRC), Media and Populism in India and Turkey, Delhi.
• Co-organizer (with ICAS:MP and CSSSC), Other Citizens: Realignments of the people and the political in the long 20th century, Kolkata.
• Co-organizer (with Paula Chakravartty, NYU, Vipul Mudgal, CSDS, Delhi, and Sanjay Srivastava, JNU, Delhi), Media and/as Activism, Delhi.
• Main organizer, Media, Activism, and the New Political, Beirut and Istanbul.
• Co-organizer (with Rupa Viswanath, University of Göttingen), In the Name of the Ordinary, Göttingen.
• Co-organizer (with Rupa Viswanath, University of Göttingen), Extrapolitics: Indian Democracy and the Political Outside, Göttingen.
• Co-organizer (with Pralay Kanungo, JNU), Urban India and New Forms of Democratic Politics, Delhi.
• Co-organizer (with Zeynep Gambetti, Bogazici University), Neoliberalism and Social movements, Ninth Mediterranean Programme Meeting, European University, Florence.
• Co-organizer (with Alev Cinar, Bilkent University and Maha Yahya, American University of Beirut), Visual Practices and Public Subjects, Beirut.
• Co-organizer (with Alev Cinar, Bilkent University and Maha Yahya, American University of Beirut), Secularism and Religious Nationalism in Comparative Perspective, Ankara.
• Co-organizer (with Amrita Basu, Amherst College), The Banality of Evil? Violence and the State in South Asia, Amherst.
• Co-organizer (with M.V. Ramana, Princeton University), Nuclear Understandings: Science, Society and the Bomb in South Asia. Dhaka.
• Co-organizer (with SSRC), International Conference on Inter-Asian Connections. Multiple editions: Dubai, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Seoul.
• Co-organizer (with SSRC), International Collaboration and Development Studies, Geneva.
• Co-organizer (with SSRC), International Collaborative Research in/on South Asia, Goa.
• Co-organizer (with SSRC), International Collaboration and Predissertation Research, New York.
FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND AWARDS
2015-2024 Co-Principal Investigator on Merian Centre grant from the BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research).
2020-2022 Principal Investigator on SSRC-InterAsia Program small grant for the “New Civilizationalisms” research network..
2015-2020 Principal Investigator on SSRC-InterAsia Program and University of Göttingen grant for the “InterAsia Residencies.”
2012-16 Co-Principal Investigator, BMBF grant for CETREN: A Transregional Research Network,
2012-2015 Lead Researcher, Carnegie Foundation grant to the SSRC-Yale University Transregional Virtual Research Institute on Media, Activism, and the New Political.
2007 Best Article Award, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians (for the article “A Symbol of Freedom: The Indian flag and transformations of Indian nationalism, 1906-2002.” Journal of Asian Studies 2006).
2006-07 Senior Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies.
2005-06 Faculty Research Grant, University of Massachusetts.
2005-06 International Workshop Grant, South-South Exchange Programme for Research on the History of Development (SEPHIS), The Netherlands.
2004-2005 Lilly Teaching Fellowship, University of Massachusetts.
2003-2005 International Collaborative Research Grant, Social Science Research Council, Middle East and North Africa Program.
2002-2003 Faculty Research Grant, University of Massachusetts.
2000 UCLA- Sardar Patel Award for the best U.S. doctoral dissertation on modern India.
2000 Certificate of Congressional Recognition for the best doctoral dissertation on modern India, U.S. House of Representatives.
1999-2000 Rockefeller Humanities Postdoctoral Residential Fellowship, International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University.
1999 Summer Fellowship, Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict (declined).
1999 Postdoctoral Grant for International Research on Peace and Security, Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation Program.
1998-1999 School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania
1996-1998 Dissertation Fellowship, Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation Program on International Peace and Security.
1996-1997 Penfeld Fellowship in International Affairs, University of Pennsylvania.