Rithika Kumar is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research lies at the intersection of urbanization, gender and politics with a regional specialization in India. Her dissertation project focuses on the political consequences of circular internal male migration on women in sending regions. Using a mixed methods approach, she looks at how the absence of men shapes women’s everyday interactions with the state and their role in local politics in these regions. Prior to starting at Penn, she was a Research Associate at IDFC Institute, a think-tank in Mumbai, India where she worked on political economy issues related to state capacity and electoral politics. She holds a Master’s in Economics from Mumbai University and a Bachelor’s in Economics and Statistics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.
Gareth Nellis is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He specializes in comparative politics and South Asia. His research addresses the extent to which elections serve as instruments of social 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. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University and was previously the Evidence in Governance and Politics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.