Nandini Deo

Associate Professor
610-758-3337
Maginnes Hall 306
Ph.D., Yale University 2008

Nandini Deo is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University. She is spending 2023-24 as Fulbright Nehru Scholar at SNDT Women’s University in Mumbai.

Her research engages South Asian politics, civil society organizations, religion and secularism, gender and childhood. Deo wrote The Politics of Collective Advocacy in India with Duncan McDuie Ra (Lynne Riener 2011). Her second book, Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India: The role of activism (Routledge 2016) compares the rise and fall of women’s movements and Hindu nationalism. Her edited volume Postsecular Feminisms? Religion and Gender in Transnational Context (Bloomsbury 2018) suggests that postsecularism is context specific.

Her forthcoming book Corporations and Civil Society in India (Anthem 2024) examines how corporate money and practices are reshaping Indian civil society. Inspired by her experience as a homeschooling parent, Deo is launching new research on children and democratic experiments.

Nandini teaches collaborative courses on Comparative Politics, Social Activism, Religion and Politics, and Indian Politics. Her classes feature active learning, lots of discussion, and a certain level of uncertainty as they are typically co-produced along with students as the semester progresses.

She serves as Treasurer for the Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association and has previously been active in the Executive Board for its Gender and Politics Section. Deo has served on a number of book and dissertation award committees for APSA.