About me

Welcome! I am the Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University in 2025. I am on the academic job market in the 2026–2027 academic year.

My research examines how states pursue nation-building in diverse societies, particularly when overt efforts are politically constrained. With a regional focus on South Asia, I study how nation-building unfolds not only through formal policies and institutions, but also through the routine practices of everyday life.

My book project develops the concept of Everyday Imposition to examine how states promote national languages through routine interactions between citizens and public institutions. I examine how these everyday practices shape linguistic hierarchies, political identity, and resistance in multilingual societies.

My broader research examines how nationalism is produced and contested from the ground up, including through food, film, and symbolic practices.

My research has received awards from the APSA Migration and Citizenship and Experiments sections. It has been supported by the American Political Science Association (APSA) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant and grants from the Yale MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, South Asian Studies Council, and Georg Walter Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy.

I hold a B.A. in Political Science from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and master’s degrees from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Department of Politics at New York University.

Email: deepika.padmanabhan@stanford.edu