Amit Ahuja

Amit Ahuja is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and serves as Faculty-in-Residence at Manzanita Village and San Rafael Residence Halls. His research focuses on inclusion/exclusion dynamics in multiethnic societies, with expertise in comparative politics, ethnicity, social movements, security, and South Asia. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2008.

Key research projects include his award-winning book *Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Movements* (2019), co-edited *Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State* (2023), and ongoing work on national army-building in multiethnic states. He has held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Institute of Indian Studies.

His teaching spans undergraduate and graduate courses on South Asian politics, military politics, poverty politics, and social movements. Awards include the 2020 New India Foundation Prize and the 2015 Margret T. Getman Service to Students Award. His research examines themes such as caste dynamics, skin color preferences, anticorruption politics, and electoral administration in India.

Current projects explore military roles in internal security and the interplay between ethnicity, identity, and state-building processes in South Asia. His work bridges theoretical frameworks with empirical analysis of contemporary political challenges in multiethnic societies.