Teaching Philosophy
I have studied in India, Germany, the United States, and Singapore, and have taught in three of these countries. I have studied and taught alongside committed teachers deeply invested in pedagogy, as well as those working at the research frontier, including a few Nobel laureates.
Over time, my teaching practice, to the extent I am allowed (after all, universities are hierarchies), is interactive, experimental, emphasizes learning by doing, and allows for multiple and critical ways of engaging with the material (readings, maps, data, primary material, case studies, research seminars). My teaching is intentional about the classroom activity and the learning outcome; when students read, research, discuss, write, or present, I expect them to develop skills in interpreting, critical reasoning, and comparing.
I participate in peer-based learning practices within and outside academia, including do-it-yourself communities (DIY), meetups, makers’ communities, and lab-based learning. In graduate school, I participated in several student-led and student-directed courses. These self-directed learning practices, which inform my current practice, are well-suited to today’s dynamic learning environment, where attention spans are limited, material is widely available online, and students can connect and collaborate across boundaries. In today's classroom, the teacher does better as a curator than an expert.
Teaching Creative Courses
After trying hard to balance my creative and academic work, I finally decided to bridge the gap. The main reason is that, given a certain amount of research, the form (exhibition, story, academic article) isn't always clear to me. Further, in the past few years, I feel more excited about public-facing projects than purely academic ones.
Teaching creative courses is tough. I realized that writing and teaching writing required different skills, often opposing. For instance, writing, for me, is often about imposing my aesthetic and other preferences on the page, while teaching writing is often about working against one's own preferences and respecting intention. Does everything pass? No! Often, there is a huge gap between what a creator intends in terms of narrative, emotion, character, history, and what is expressed on the page, and then there is the intention not just for oneself but for the reader. I stay away from arbitrary advice masquerading as universal, such as 'use the active voice' and 'show, don't tell.' Developing one's subjective 'taste' is essential to create anything, hence we spend much time reading and discussing alongside writing.
Usually, I run the course like a workshop where students arrive with thematic interests, do weekly exercises, and build up their project cumulatively towards a final draft at the end of the term. The end is usually a public showcase and a party, which ensures students put in a lot of effort.
Teaching Comparative Politics
I have taught Comparative Politics for most of my career. My primary goal in a politics course is to help students develop an analytical framework for understanding political issues. Understanding how individuals make political decisions is central to this framework. We use several strategies to approach this question. One strategy is to work through discrete but interrelated steps in the decision process - beliefs, preferences, choices, strategies, and outcomes. Another strategy is to work through the structural (institutional), behavioral (cultural), and rational-choice approaches in the field and transcend these artificial distinctions. A third strategy is social choice – how are individual decisions aggregated at the level of electoral constituencies, political parties, interest groups, committees, ruling coalitions, or countries? A fourth strategy is to incorporate political economy - how do political decisions interact with economic interests?
In organizing the syllabus, I ensure that the readings reveal the debate in question. For instance, in the week on nationalism, I include Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities alongside Stephan et al.’s State-Nations. This juxtaposition allows us to ask not only how nations are imagined but also how nations are built. The presence of multi-nationals within a state complicates nation-building. We discuss if civic-national identities can overcome ethnic-national identities. This conversation connects with the week on Identity. Here, we read Daniel Posner’s (2004) article on the political salience of cultural difference alongside Mala Htun’s (2004) article on the political representation of gender and ethnicity. We are forced to think through the limits of constructivism in identity formation as well as the limits of essentialism (presuming identities to be cross-cutting or coinciding). In the week on Ideologies, we read Fareed Zakaria (1997) on the rise of illiberal democracies alongside a chapter from Chua Beng Huat’s book on Singaporean communitarianism and state capitalism. These readings allow us to examine liberal constitutionalism from one of its leading supporters and one of its leading critics. The limits of constitutionalism are central to our conversation. Is the limit set by super-majoritarianism? How are debates regarding static versus the living constitution resolved?
A typical week in the class involves an introduction to the readings and background on the theme, a compilation of student-posed questions, a structured group discussion on a specific set of questions, a student-led presentation, and a quiz. This structure ensures that we work through the material in different ways and that students are active in the classroom. These activities are curated on the course website. Towards the end, I assign students the task of summarizing the themes and the methods. They present the questions and debates we were able to participate in and the conundrums relegated to the future.
Students receive structured feedback. They are graded on class presentations, quizzes, structured classroom participation, and two referee reports spread across the term. In the past two iterations of the course, I have come to rely on the referee report as a fundamental tool to develop critical, analytical, and writing skills. We write a referee report in class, the students work in groups to do another one as a mid-term assignment, and they write an individual referee report for their final assignment. By the end of the term, I am confident that the students can critically and irreverently engage with articles in leading journals as well as popular media.
Courses Taught
Thematic
Power: Team-taught Core Course for first-year students: Term 2 2025-26.
Comparative Social Inquiry: Team-taught Common Curriculum course for first-year students: Term 1 2018 − 19, Term 1 2019 − 20, Term 1 2020 − 21
Introduction to Comparative Politics: Elective in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Major (PPE): Term 2 2015 − 16, Term 1 2016 − 17, Term 2 2017 − 18, Term 2 2018 − 19, Term 1 2021 − 22, Term 2 2021 − 22, Term 1 2022 − 23, Term 1 2023 − 24, Term 2 2023 − 24
Colonialism and Decolonization: Elective in PPE: Term 2 2020 − 21, Term 1 2021 − 22
Colonialism: Economic, Political, and Social Effects: Elective in PPE: Term 1 2016 − 17
Methods in the Social Sciences: Elective in PPE, Term 2 2016 − 17
Culture and Violence: Elective in PPE, Term 1 2015 − 16
Practise-based
Contemporary Political Comedy: Elective in PPE, Term 2 2017 − 18
Film and Politics: Elective in PPE, Term 2 2023 − 24
South Asia/India-centric
Religion and Politics in South Asia: Elective in PPE, Term 2 2016 − 17, Term 2 2022 − 23
The Guru in Hinduism: Elective in PPE, Term 2 2018 − 19
Ideology in India: Elective in PPE, Term 2 2022 − 23, Term 2 2023 − 24