Education

M.A. (International Studies), Claremont Graduate University, 1996
Ph.D. (Political Science), Claremont Graduate University, 2001

Profile

Siddharth Swaminathan received an MA and PhD in political science from the Claremont Graduate University. He has previously held faculty positions at Azim Premji University, the Institute for Social and Economic Change, La Sierra University, and California State University. He is a member of the Lokniti Network and most recently a Research Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University (2023-25). He has published in the American Journal of Sociology, Studies in Comparative International Development, Studies in Indian Politics, Economic and Political Weekly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Social Science and Medicine, International Interactions, among others. He is also the co-author (with Suhas Palshikar) of a study on public opinion in India titled “Politics and Society between Elections: Public Opinion in India’s States.” His areas of interest are Citizenship and Urban governance, Subnational State Capacity, Public Opinion and Voter Behavior, and Quantitative Methods.

Publications

• Heller, P., Swaminathan, S., & Varshney, A. (2023). The Rich have Peers, The Poor have Patrons: Engaging the State in a South Indian City. American Journal of Sociology, 129 (1): 78-122. (The Citizenship, Inequality, and Urban Governance project).