Rikhil Bhavnani

Faculty Webpage

Rikhil Bhavnani

Biography

Rikhil R. Bhavnani is Professor and the Glenn B. and Cleone Orr Hawkins Chair at the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on the political economy of development and migration, and on inequalities in political representation, mainly in South Asia.

Professor Bhavnani is the co-author, with Bethany Lacina, of a book on the backlash against within-country migration across the developing world, published by Cambridge University Press. His research has also been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the International Growth Centre.

Professor Bhavnani currently serves as President of the Midwest Political Science Association. He is a Faculty Affiliate at the La Follette School of Public Affairs, the Data Science Institute, the Elections Research Center, and the Center for South Asia—which he previously directed. He has served as the Department’s Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Studies.

Before joining UW–Madison, Professor Bhavnani was a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. He has also worked at the Center for Global Development and the International Monetary Fund. Professor Bhavnani received a PhD in political science and an MA in economics from Stanford University, and a BA in political science and economics from Yale University. His pronouns are he/him.