Gender and Politics | MIGRATION | SOUTH ASIA
Rithika Kumar
I study how the household shapes women’s political lives. Specifically, who speaks to the state, who runs for office, and who governs once elected.
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rice University. My research lies at the intersection of gender, urbanization and politics with a regional specialization on South Asia, specifically India.
I ask how development processes such as economic migration and political decentralization change local political engagement by reshaping the relationship between private and public life. I utilize a mixed methods approach combining large scale observational and administrative data, with fieldwork intensive quantitative and qualitative data. My research has been published in the Journal of Politics and I am currently working on my book project, Silent Shifts: Male Migration and the Feminization of Politics.
I received my PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, and spent AY 2023–24 as a postdoctoral fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to starting at Penn, I was a Research Associate at IDFC Institute, a think-tank in Mumbai.
In my free time I enjoy bringing to life recipes saved on my NYTimes Cooking app!
My email address is rk115@rice.edu. You can also follow me on Twitter @kumar_rithika.
