Kanchan Chandra '93

Kanchan Chandra, Professor of Politics at New York University obtained her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2000, and her A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1993. She recently served as the President of the Political Economy Section of the American Political Science Association (2018-20) and Chair of NYU's South Asia Program (2016-7). She specializes in the study of democracy, ethnic identity politics and South Asian politics. She is the author or lead author of Democratic Dynasties (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Headcounts in India (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and of articles in several leading journals. She has also written occasionally for Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Quartz, the BBC, the Washington Post, the Times of India, the Hindu, the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express, Caravan, Economic and Political Weekly, Seminar, and Frontline. Her work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Carnegie Corporation Fellowship, and fellowships or grants from the Princeton Program on Democracy and Development, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Harvard Academy, the SSRC-Macarthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Institute of Peace.