About

I am a PhD candidate in political science at UC Berkeley. My research centres on the political implications of cultural diversity in democratic states, a focus that is at the core of my dissertation project. My interests span contemporary Middle Eastern and South Asian politics, liberal democratic theory, Islamic political theory, the impact of religious identity in the development of modern languages, and the broader politics of cultural identity. Outside of the Middle East and South Asia, I am also working on projects involving multicultural democracy in Canada, Spain, and France. 

I hold a BA/MA in international studies and BAs in Arabic and French from the University of Oklahoma. I am also the recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Student Research grant (India, 2020), a State Department Critical Language Scholarship award (Arabic - Amman, Jordan, 2019), and four Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships (Hindi, 2020-21; Urdu, 2021-22; Urdu, 2025-26; Urdu, 2026). Additionally, I have received research grants from the Edward Hildebrand Graduate Fellowship (Canadian Studies Program) and the Al-Falah Program in Islamic Studies (Center for Middle Eastern Studies), and the Bhattacharya Graduate Fellowship on Contemporary India (Institute for South Asia Studies) at UC Berkeley.

Dissertation project

My dissertation project, which blends comparative political history and applied political philosophy, examines the origins, development, and failings of four multicultural democracies (India, Lebanon, Spain, and Canada) built on the principle of unity in diversity. My dissertation examines the rise and decline of multicultural democracies through the lens of strategic ambiguity, a process of negotiation and constitution drafting based on a deliberate and calibrated vagueness about sensitive cultural issues in constitutional texts that allows different ethnolinguistic/religious communities to endorse a shared constitutional framework despite differing cultural conceptions of national community. Strategic ambiguity helps produce constitutional design choices that all sides can endorse from the perspective of their individual worldviews (for instance, the Spanish Constitution defines Spain as a “nation of nationalities,” a formula that appeals to Basque/Catalan nationalists as well as right-wing Spanish nationalists in different ways). Although empirically oriented, my theory draws on political philosophy—principally John Rawls’s theory of public reason, but also other social contract theorists (Rousseau, Hobbes) and theorists of multicultural democracy (Kymlicka, Taylor). I then use strategic ambiguity as a theoretical lens to analyse four multicultural democracies—India, Spain, Lebanon, and Canada—drawing on parliamentary debates, newspaper clippings, memoirs, and archival correspondence in seven languages (French, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Catalan, and English). 

I distinguish strategic ambiguity—which uses formulas open to different interpretations, allowing different communities to endorse them as congruent with their non-shared cultural worldviews without referencing what others have given up—from traditional score-keeping compromises, in which each side accepts objectionable provisions only due to reciprocal concessions by others. I demonstrate that strategically ambiguous compromises are distinguishable from traditional compromises in the writing and public justification of constitutional compromises, and that these differences play a significant role in explaining the differing trajectories of multicultural democracies, with strategic ambiguity providing a stronger foundation for durable multicultural democracy.