Dr. Soham Das

Dr. Soham Das is an Assistant Professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs. Prior to this, he was a contractual post-doctoral researcher at The University of Texas at Dallas engaging in research on peacebuilding and collaborating in a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded Artificial Intelligence – Machine Learning (AI–ML) project. He holds a PhD in Political Science with Research Methods concentration and a Masters degree in Political Science from The University of Texas (Dallas), USA. He also earned a Bachelors in Political Science and Masters degree in Political Science with International Relations from Jadavpur University (India). He has been an instructor in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas (Dallas) and has taught courses on civil conflict and ethnic politics.

Dr. Das’s research interests span in the fields of comparative politics, international relations, public policy, electoral politics, and social-economic inequalities. His current research is centered around the exploratory and causal analysis of conservative electoral victories and hate crimes in the United States of America, Germany, and India. In addition to this, he is engaged with the issues of identity politics in the Indian elections, subnational positive peace, security dilemma among majorities in India, and ethno-civil violence in South Asia. Dr. Das’s doctoral dissertation titled ‘Minority and Majority: Cleavages, Conflicts, and Electoral Politics in the Indian Sub-Continent’ examined the aspects of ethnic conflict not only through the lens of the minorities but studied the apprehension and threat perspective of the ethnic majorities as well. He uses mixed methods approaches in his research that combine statistical analysis using large demographic and secondary datasets with process tracing and comparative case study analyses. Currently at JSIA, he teaches courses on Introduction to Research Methods and Social Science Research Methods (quantitative and qualitative) at undergraduate and graduate levels.