Profile
Department of Political Science
The Department of Political Science at Heidelberg is one of its kind located within a South Asia Institute (SAI). This brings to the department the richness of South Asia studies, and proximity to neighbourhood disciplines ranging from Indology, Modern Languages, History, and Anthropology to Development Economics and Geography.
The focus of the department is Comparative Politics and International Relations of South Asia. We have a special interest in governance at the local, national and global levels. We are deeply interested in qualitative and historically grounded social science. Our aim is to preserve the rigor of qualitative social science without compromising the richness of area studies. Our comparative and scientific work is driven by a deep concern and understanding of South Asia. We seek to advance scholarly knowledge even when our research carries the germs of policy impact.
Research
The department is happy to train research students and invite visitors generally interested in Comparative Politics and International Relations of South Asia. We are engaged with projects concerning:
- State Capacity & Governance in South Asia
- Democratic Backsliding in India and South Asia
- South Asia (and India) in the global economy
- Foreign Economic Policies
- Climate Change Politics
We research governance at the local, national and global levels. We engage with comparative and historically grounded social science.
Teaching
The Department of Political Science benefits from both the diversity of disciplines taught and researched within SAI, as well as, from rigorous Political Science taught and researched at the Institute of Politics (IPW). The Department’s strengths and our quest to fulfil the needs of our students with the larger offerings at SAI and IPW enables us to provide an unusual and rigorous research and teaching program in the Political Science of South Asia.
We provide a rich offering of courses on Comparative Politics, International Relations, and Governance. We participate in the BA and MA in South Asian Studies, and we run a rigorous doctoral program in Political Science. Research students at the MA and Ph.D. levels participate in course-work in Comparative Politics, International Relations, South Asian Politics and in the methodologies of comparative and historically grounded case study research.
