Shahana Sheikh

Shahana Sheikh's research agenda examines the relationship between development and democracy in South Asia, with a focus on India. Her work is motivated by the question of how major development-driven transformations are reshaping democratic politics. Specifically, she studies three ongoing transformations: changes in media and communication technologies, urbanization, and environmental degradation. Her research explores how these transformations affect three core dimensions of democracy—political parties, political behavior, and party–voter linkages—with particular emphasis on party strategy, election campaigns, and political participation. To investigate these questions, Shahana employs a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methods, including in-depth semi-structured interviews, participant observation, grounded theory, content analysis, surveys, and survey experiments.

 

Previously, Shahana was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD in Political Science from Yale University. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she worked as a policy researcher on urban governance and public finance in India. To learn more about her research, please visit: https://www.shahanasheikh.com/.