Steven I. Wilkinson

Steven I. Wilkinson is Professor of Political Science at Yale University and currently serves as Dean of Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (since January 2025), overseeing 1,000 faculty members across sciences, social sciences and humanities. He is also affiliated with Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies and the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

His research focuses on comparative politics with special emphasis on South Asian politics, civil-military relations, and the development of democracy in India and Pakistan. Wilkinson's work combines historical analysis with political science methodology, often drawing on archival research from the National Archives of India and the British Library.

His influential scholarship is exemplified by Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence (2015), which examines why India successfully maintained civilian control over its military while Pakistan experienced military coups despite sharing similar colonial military institutions.

• Named Telegraph (Kolkata) 2015 non-fiction book of the year
• Awarded Vipul Dutta's Book of the Year in Biblio (2015)
• Featured in prominent reviews by C. Raja Mohan, Srinath Raghavan, and Ramachandra Guha

As an academic mentor, Wilkinson has supervised numerous PhD students who have gone on to prestigious positions at Harvard, Boston University, UCSD, and ANU. His administrative leadership includes serving as Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center (2019-2025), Vice Provost for Global Strategy (2022-24), Acting Dean of Social Science (2021-22), and Chair of the Department of Political Science (2014-2019).