I am an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, where I specialize in comparative politics, political economy, and South Asia (the region that includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka).

I study the relationship between democracy and intergroup relations. My research addresses the extent to which elections serve as instruments of inclusion or exclusion in developing democracies. One line of work examines the electoral rise of violent ethno-religious nationalism; the other aims to understand the political marginalization of internal migrants.

I received my PhD from Yale University. Prior to UCSD, I was the Evidence in Governance and Politics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. I am an EGAP member and a CEGA faculty affiliate. I was a UCSD Hellman Fellow for 2020-21 and a non-resident visiting fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania for 2021-22. I sit on the steering committee for EGAP’s Displacement, Migration, and Integration Priority Theme, and am Chair of the Faculty of Revelle College.

I am the placement director for UCSD’s PhD program. Please feel free to contact me about our students on job market.

You can see my CV here.