Nandini Dey is an Emerging Democracies Postdoctoral Fellow for 2023–2025. Her research interests include borders, migration, security, empire, and citizenship. She received her PhD in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University in 2023. Her research has been funded by the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant along with other fellowships. She has taught classes in International Relations, Comparative Politics, and on Migration and Citizenship. She is currently an elected member of the Executive Committee of APSA’s Migration and Citizenship Section.
Nandini is currently preparing a book manuscript that examines how empires employed trans-regional practices of bordering and migration controls to securitize the movements of those seen as existential threats. She employs historical analysis to study imperial migration controls imposed by the British Empire over the Indian subcontinent constituting the migration–security infrastructure that emerged in the region and beyond in the early–mid 20th century. Drawing on interpretive archival research at the British Library and the National Archives in Britain, she shows how states use securitizing discourses to designate individuals, groups, or even ideas as dangerous “others” to exclude them, leading to long-term and often multi-generational implications not only for restricting their movements but also in adjudicating their (non)belonging and (non)citizenship. Her research demonstrates how several imperial border-management practices became institutionalized in the contemporary world order and continue to govern the global migration regime. Nandini’s forthcoming article in Security Dialogue, “Subjects, Aliens, and Undesirables: Managing Mobility and Insecurity in the British Empire,” demonstrates some of the primary arguments of her book and further explores how the creation and institutionalization of security threats were critical to the formation of borders, state spaces, and the territorial nation-state that is now central to the politics of international migration. This article was awarded the Fred Hartmann Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper by the International Studies Association–Northeast for 2022.
As an Emerging Democracies Postdoctoral Fellow, Nandini is continuing work on her book manuscript and on expanding her research on imperial and post-imperial migration controls and regulations of citizenship. In addition, she is working on new projects that include researching international aviation security and how borders are conceptualised and incorporated in climate change policies.
Education:
- PhD, Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, 2023
- MA, Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, 2019
- MSc, History, University of Edinburgh, 2014
- BA, Political Science, University of Delhi, 2013
Grants and Honours:
- Fred Hartmann Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper, International Studies Association–Northeast (ISA–NE)
- Provost’s Office COVID Relief Dissertation Completion Fellowship (Summer), JHU (2023)
- Joel Steward Ish Fellowship, Department of Political Science, JHU (2022)
- Malcolm H. Laucheimer Fellowship, Department of Political Science, JHU (2021)
- Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, JHU (2021)
- APSA–NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (2020)
- Nicole Suveges Fieldwork Fellowship, Department of Political Science, JHU (2020)
- Scholar, Public Scholarship Program, American Political Science Association (2019)
