Register to join the Bridging the Gulf talk
As part of our South Asian Politics Series, organized with Brown University and MIT, Prof. Nikhar Gaikwad (Columbia University) will present on the social impact of migration in a globalized world. Prof. Pia Raffler (Harvard University) will serve as the moderator.
Nikhar Gaikwad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and a member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He specializes in international and comparative political economy, with a focus on the politics of economic policymaking, business-state relations, and identity. Substantively, he works on trade, migration, and environmental policymaking. He has a regional specialization in India, which he studies in comparative perspective with other democratic emerging economies.
Prior to joining Columbia University, he was a Fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. He received his PhD, with departmental and university distinction, in political science from Yale University, and BA, magna cum laude, in economics and political science (honors) from Williams College.
Gaikwad’s research focuses on two types of competition that recur in the political arena: economic contestation and identity conflict. A main line of inquiry studies how cultural divisions interact with economic rivalries when actors contest distributive policies. A second stream of work investigates how conflicts of interest between economic agents influence the policymaking process. He analyzes competing interests as a theoretical lens to study questions related to representation, policy change, and development.
This event is part of the Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics, co-sponsored by the Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute at Brown University; the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and South Asia Institute at Harvard University; and the MIT Center for International Studies.