Murphy Seminar in Political Science: Tariq Thachil (UPenn)
Professor, Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India and Director of the Center for Advanced Study of India
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Each semester The Murphy Institute sponsors a series of seminars organized by the Tulane Department of Political Science that provides an opportunity for faculty, researchers, and practitioners to present their latest research and pressing issues related to topics in political economy. Research presented covers all aspects of contemporary politics science, including comparative politics, public policy, international relations, American politics, and normative theory. For more information, contact the Department of Political Science at polisci@tulane.edu.
Professor Thachil is a Professor of Political Science, Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India, and Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India. Thachil is a scholar of comparative politics, focusing on political parties and political behavior, identity politics, urbanization and migration, with a regional focus on India. His first book 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.
Thachil's current research focuses on governance challenges within India’s small towns, dramatically understudied spaces that house nearly half of the country’s urban population. A second stream of research focuses on understanding the politics and policymaking around environmental crises, focusing on air pollution in India.
His articles have appeared in 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.
