Please join us for a seminar on South Asian politics co-hosted by the Saxena Center at Brown University, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and the Mittal Institute at Harvard University.
Speaker:
- Rachel Brule, Associate Professor of Global Development Policy at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies
Discussant:
- Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Political Science at Brown University
- Gautam Nair, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
- Feyaad Allie, Assistant Professor of Government, Harvard University
- Mashail Malik, Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University
About the Speaker:
Rachel Brule is the 2024-2025 SAGE Sara Miller McCune Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She is also an Associate Professor of Global Development Policy at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. She is Graduate Faculty with BU’s Department of Political Science, Associate Director of the Human Capital Initiative at the Global Development Policy Center and affiliated faculty with the Institute for Economic Development.
Her research identifies the conditions under which political, economic, and social systems rebalance gendered power. She is a political scientist who bridges development economics and feminist theory, combining careful causal identification with innovative theory building and extensive field research in South Asia. Gendered power hierarchies define our current political system, from the family to the local, national, and global. Her work points to the need to critically reckon with the dual movements of progress towards and backlash against gender equality. Understanding the complexity of gendered power and the consequences of its disruption are necessary to solve the most intractable contemporary problems, from climate change to economic inequality and conflict.