Dipin Kaur

I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Ashoka University (Haryana, India), and currently a Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

My research focuses on ethnicity and state strategy in the shadow of political violence, with a regional focus on South Asia and the British Empire.

My book project, Coethnic Counterinsurgents, explains why states collaborate with coethnics (i.e., individuals belonging to the same ethnic groups as insurgents) in response to some conflicts, but rely on ethnic outgroups in others. I answer this question using a variety of empirical methods, including qualitative interviews from multi-site fieldwork, archival research, and cross-national quantitative analysis.

In other work – published in the American Journal of Political Science, Civil Wars, Social Text, Oxford Intersections, and theRoutledge Handbooks series – I study gender dynamics, public opinion-building in conflict, and the politics of post-conflict transitional justice. Finally, two of my ongoing projects leverage survey research methods to understand public opinion in times of conflict and exclusion.

Originally from New Delhi (India), I completed my B.A. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, before undertaking doctoral training.
I received my PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 2022.

At Ashoka, I teach thematic courses on gender in politics and political violence, post-conflict dynamics, and research design with a focus on qualitative methods.