Reflections on Elections in South Asia

Date
Thu April 18th 2019, 12:00 - 1:30pm
Event Sponsor
Center for South Asia
Location
Encina Hall, West Rm 219
616 Serra Street
Reflections on Elections in South Asia

This round-table will bring together Professors Robert Crews (Stanford University), Maya Tudor (University of Oxford; CASBS Fellow), Saum Jha (Stanford University), and Ali Riaz (Illinois State University) to discuss issues concerning the recent elections, popular participation, and political regimes in the cases of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and India. The session will be moderated by Professor Saad Gulzar (Stanford University). Co-sponsored by Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the event is free and open to the public.

Robert Crews  is Professor of History at Stanford University. His research and teaching interests focus on Afghanistan, Central and South Asia, Russia, Islam, and Global History.  A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he received an MA in History from Columbia University and a PhD degree in History from Princeton University. He is the author of Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015) and For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Harvard University Press, 2006) and co-editor of Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands (Harvard University Press, 2012) and The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan (Harvard University Press, 2008). His work has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The New York Times.

Maya Tudor is Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy in the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. She is spending this academic year as a Stanford CASBS Fellow, working book projects about nationalism, democracy, and social science scholarship. She holds a PhD in politics and public policy and an MPA in development studies from Princeton University. As a comparative political scientist, she has published extensively on democracy, nationalist movements, and party competition. Her book, Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 2013) was based on her doctoral thesis, which won the 2010 Gabriel Almond Prize awarded by the American Political Science Association for the best dissertation in comparative politics.

Saumitra Jha is Associate Professor of Political Economy in Stanford Graduate School of Business. His research focuses on understanding the effectiveness of organizations and innovations that societies have developed to address the problems of violence and political risk in the past and to develop new lessons for contemporary policy.  He has published extensively on comparative politics, development economics, economic history, political economy in teh context of South Asia and also globally. He serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Development Economics, theJournal of Comparative Economics, and of the Political Economy section of the new inter-disciplinary journal, Global Perspectives

Ali Riaz is a Distinguished Professor​ of Politics and Government and holds Thomas E Eimermann Professorhip​ at Illinois State University. He has earned international reputation as an expert on violent extremism, political islam, South Asian politics, and Bangladeshi politics. He is the author of many books, including Lived Experiences of Islam and Islamism in Bangladesh (Prothoma, 2017), Islam and Identity Politics among British-Bangladeshis: A Leap of Faith (University of Manchester Press, 2013), Paradise Lost? State Failure in Nepal (Lexington, 2007), God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), and Voice & Silence: Contextualizing Taslima Nasreen (Ankur Prakashani, 1995).

Saad Gulzar  is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at New York University in 2017. His research interests lie in the political economy of development and comparative politics, with a regional focus on South Asia. He studies political participation and development by working closely with citizens, politicians, political parties, and government agencies. His publications appreead in the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Politics. He isan affiliate of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA),  Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP)Association for Analytical Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS), the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), and the Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR). 

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