About me

Welcome! I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Weatherhead Scholars Program at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. I completed my Ph.D. in Political Science at Yale University in 2025.

I reserach nationalism, language and self-determination, with a regional focus in South Asia. I am on the job market in the 2025-2026 academic year.

My research addresses a central puzzle in political science: how political elites manage diversity while building a strong national identity. I focus on how nation-building unfolds not only through grand policies or formal institutions but also from the ground up, in everyday life. In my dissertation, I examine how states promote national languages through routine, informal interactions with citizens, which I call the everyday imposition of language. 

My collaborative research extends this framework to explore how other daily practices, such as food, film, and symbolic rituals, are also used to cultivate nationalism from the ground up.

My research has been generously 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 BA in Political Science from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and Master’s degrees from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and the Department of Politics, New York University. 

Email: deepikapadmanabhan@fas.harvard.edu