I am Professor of Political Science, Director of the Center for Advanced Study of India (CASI), and Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India at the University of Pennsylvania.

My research focuses on political parties and political behavior, identity politics, urbanization and migration, with a regional focus on India. My current work focuses on the political consequences of urbanization, and draws on extensive qualitative and quantitative research among poor migrants in Indian cities. The centerpiece of this work is a book (coauthored with Adam Auerbach), Migrants and Machine Politics, published by Princeton University Press (Studies in Political Behavior) in 2023. The book received the 2024 Sartori Book Prize for best book from APSA’s Qualitative and Mixed-methods Section, and was co-winner of the 2024 Best Book Prize from APSA’s Experiments Section.

My first book, Elite Parties, Poor Voters examines how elite parties can use social services to win mass support, through a study of Hindu nationalism in India, and was published by Cambridge University Press (Studies in Comparative Politics) in 2014. This project won the 2015 Gregory Luebbert Award for best book in comparative politics, and the 2015 Leon Epstein Award for best book on political parties, from the American Political Science Association.

My articles are published or forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, World Politics, and other outlets, and have won the 2018 Heinz Eulau Prize for best article published in the American Political Science Review, and 2020 American Journal of Political Science Best Article Award.