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Head Researcher, Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi

Jean-Thomas Martelli (pdf)

Education

2012 – 2018 PhD in Political Science and Political Sociology, King’s College London, King’s India Institute. Supervisors: Prof. Christophe Jaffrelot & Dr Louise Tillin.
2010 – 2012 Joint MA in Global Studies, Erasmus Mundus Global Studies (EMGS) Programme, University of Roskilde, Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Wrocław.
2006 – 2012 MA in Political Science and International Affairs, Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence.
2008 – 2009 Associate Degree in Political Science and Government, University of Ottawa.

Academic Employment & Experience

September 2018 Head Researcher, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), Politics and Society Division, New Delhi (French National Scientific Research Council unit, UMIFRE 20 MEAE-CNRS). Research Project: Interstitial Democracy: The Fashioning of Dissent and Generational Student Politics in Saffron India.
2017 – 2018 Postdoctoral fellow at CERI-Sciences Po Paris (UMR7050) as part of the collaborative research project Indian Subcontinent’s Shared Sacred Sites: Religious Interactions and Relations with the Other (I-SHARE). The research project is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR).
2016 – 2017 Sessional lecturer, Sciences Po Paris. 168 hours taught (2016-2017).
Jan. – May 2015 Visiting Fellow, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi.
January 2015 Editor of the Noria South Asia Publication Programme. Noria is the leading youth-based research think-tank in France. It receives a wide readership and is one of the few platforms dedicated to Asia-related content.
2014 – 2015 PhD Fieldwork. Ethnographic research in Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi among current and former student activists and politicised professors. Short-term complementary field research conducted in 2016 and 2017.

Research Funding, Grants, Honours and Awards

2019 Principal Investigator. Research Project: Intermediary Actors of Indian Politics (IAIP), Research Partners: CNRS80, D’Alembert Fund (France), ICAS:MP (Germany), Ashoka University & Jawaharlal Nehru University (India), King’s College London (UK) (co-investigated with Julien Levesque).
2018 – 2019 Visiting Professor (Lehrstuhlvertretung), Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (declined).
2018 Assistant Professor, Political Science Department, Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)(declined).
2018 Assistant Professor, Political Science Department, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H)(shortlisted, declined interview).
2017 Research Grant, National Scientific Research Council (CNRS). Pilot project on political narratives in the South Asian context. Project in collaboration with Sciences Po Paris, Ashoka University and the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT Ahmedabad).
2015 Visiting Grant, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH).
2012 Excellence Grant, Erasmus Mundus Global Studies (EMGS).

Peer-reviewed Publications

Forthcoming “Generational Communities: Student Activism and the Politics of Becoming in South Asia,” Introduction to the special issue SAMAJ, Student Politics in South Asia, Submitted December 2019 (co-authored with Kristina Garalytė).
Forthcoming “The Spillovers of Competition: Value-based Activism and the Democratization of Dissent in an Indian Campus,” SAMAJ, Revised November 2019.
Forthcoming “On Why and How Campuses Mediate a Nationwide Upsurge Against India’s Communalization,” Postscript of the special issue SAMAJ, Student Politics in South Asia, Submitted January 2020 (co-authored with Kristina Garalytė).
Under Review “The Politics of our Selves: Left Self-fashioning and the Production of Representative Claims in Everyday Indian Campus Politics,” Modern Asian Studies, Revised September 2019.
2018 “From a Radical Cohort to the Other: Surveying Political Incubation in an Indian University,” India Review 17, Issue 3: 263-300, DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2018.1473319 (co-authored with Baris Ari).
2018  “JNU Promotes Diversity, Democracy, and Dissent Across the Political Spectrum,Economic and Political Weekly 53, Issue 11: 3597-3606 (co-authored with Khaliq Parkar).
June 2016  “Historicising Student Activism and their Discourses: a Textometric Analysis,” Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Statistical Analysis of Textual Data-JADT, 7–10 June 2016, Nice. ISBN:978-2-7466-9067-7.

Datasets & Curatorship

November 2019 Curation of the exhibition Memories of Change at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Sponsored by the Fonds d’Alembert, the CNRS80 programme of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) et the International Centre of Advanced Studies (ICAS:MP).
May 2018 Database of Indian Prime Ministers’ Speeches (DIPMS), a textual and historical archive of Indian Prime Ministerial public speeches, 1946 – 2019(+5 200 discourses).
April 2018 Indian Politics Tweets (IPT), an eclectic database of political tweets, including those of political figures (e.g. Modi, +16 000 tweets) and revolving mostly around contentious issues (e.g. #JNU).
January 2015 Pamphlet Repository for Changing Activism (PaRChA), a large online platform of digitalised material (+70 000 documents, mostly pamphlets) produced by student organisations in Delhi.

Other Publications & Media Work

January 2020 “The Public University as a Political Space,” The Ganatantra podcast, Season 2, Episode 20 (Interview with Sarayu Natarajan and Alok Prasanna Kumar).
October 2019 “Modi II : succès électoral et premières mesures phares,” La revue du Comité Inde des Conseillers du Commerce Extérieur de la France (CCEF), No.2, 2019, pp.12-14 (co-authored with Julien Levesque).
February 2019 Dreamers: How Young Indians are Changing the World,” Book review, Contemporary South Asia, Volume 27, Issue 1, 2019, pp.1-2,DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2019.1573885.
August 2017 Reading Modi, through his speeches,” Indian Express, Explained Section, 15 August 2017 (co-authored with Christophe Jaffrelot).
July 2017 Waiting for the liberal Indian enfant terrible,” IAPS Dialogue: The online magazine of the Institute of Asia & Pacific Studies, 14 July 2017.
March 2016 Republic of JNU,” Tehelka, Volume 13, Issue 8, 2016, pp.7-10 (co-authored with Shafi Rahman).
March 2016 Universités: un monde enchantier Les campus au cœur des luttessociales,” France Culture, Culturesmonde, 2 March 2016 (Interview with Xavier Martinet).
August 2012 Master thesis. Processes of Mobilisation of Revolutionary Movements: The Case of the Indian Naxalite Movement in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Master Thesis dissertation, Roskilde Universiteit, Roskilde.
May 2010  Master thesis. La Rhétorique de la liberté: comparaisons et structure. Master Thesis dissertation, Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence, Aix-en-Provence.

Teaching Experience

Fall 2017 Course CSPO15341: Contemporary Indian Politics, term 2, BA second year, Euro-Asia Programme in Le Havre, Sciences Po Paris (taught jointly with Xavier Houdoy).
Spring 2016 2017 Seminar ASPO1130A: Political Science, term 2, BA first year, Euro-US Programme in Reims, Sciences Po Paris.
Fall 2016 Course CSPO1090A: Indian Democracy: Founding Elements, Evolutions and Challenges, term 1, BA second year, Euro-Asia Programme in Le Havre, Sciences Po Paris (taught jointly with Xavier Houdoy).
Fall 2016 & 2017 Seminar ASPO1460A: Understanding International Politics, term 1, BA second year, tutorial seminar, Euro-American Programme in Reims, Sciences Po Paris.
Fall 2015 Ethnography section of the module: Applied Research Methods 7YYI0018, term 1, MRes and MA in “Contemporary India,” King’s India Institute, King’s College London.

Select Conferences & Seminars

January 2020 “Student Politics in South Asia: Generational Communities?,” Conference: Childhood, Youth, and Identity in South Asia, Shiv Nadar University, 6-7 January 2020, School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SoHSS), Noida.
November 2019 “The Politics of our Selves: Left Self-fashioning and the Production of Representative Claims in Everyday Indian Campus Politics,” Joint workshop of the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) and the Centres de Sciences Humaines (CSH), 29-30 novembre 2019, Institute of Economic Growth (IEG), New Delhi.
November 2019 “Discussing MoC: A Conversation with Snigdha Poonam and Anand Kumar”, Round table of the exhibition Memories of Change, 11 November 2019, India Habitat Centre (IHC), New Delhi.
October 2019 The Spillovers of Competition: Value-based Activism and the Democratization of Dissent in an Indian Campus. ” Conference : Great Transition in India, 10 October 2019, Institute of Indian Studies, HUFS, Seoul.
September 2019 “Populism as Imitation: Theoretical Insights from India.”ECPR General Conference, University of Wrocław, 4 September 2019, Wrocław.
August 2019 “Altbach in India: Revisiting Altbach’s theory of student activism in light of new research on contemporary student politics in the Global South.” CHER 32nd Annual Conference, 30 August 2019, INCHER-Kassel, Kassel. (co-authored with Khaliq Parkar).
January 2019 “’Aping the People’: A Text Analysis of Populist Mimesis in Narendra Modi Speeches.” South Asian Studies Programme, Seminar Series, 25 January 2019, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore
November 2018 “From Resonant to Dissonant: Campus Spaces and the Rejuvenation of Political Narratives at Jawaharlal Nehru University (1964-2018).” SAMAJ seminar, 19-20 November 2018, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and Centre de recherches internationales (CERI), Sciences Po Paris, Paris.
October 2018 “The Metamorphoses of Political Narratives in India: Two Exploratory Case Studies”. Internal Seminar, Centre of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi.
October 2018  “From Resonant to Dissonant: Campus Spaces and the Changing Political Narratives at Jawaharlal Nehru University (1964-2018).” 47th Annual Conference on South Asia at UW-Madison, 11-14 October 2018, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison.
August 2018 “Globalization and its Vernacularisation in Contemporary India.” Guest Speaker, Global Studies Summer School, 12 August 2018, Felsted International School, Dunmow, United Kingdom.
July 2018 “Junctures and Identities of the Prime Ministerial Discourse in Contemporary India: An Exploratory Textual Analysis (1947-2017).” 2018 Association for Asian Studies (AAS-in-Asia), 5-8 July 2018, Ashoka University, New Delhi.
June 2018  “Achieving Political Representation: The Practice of Biographic Reconfiguration in Leftist Indian Politics.” 43nd Regular Conference of the Korean Society for Indian Studies, 9 June 2018, Tongmyong University, Busan
June 2018 “Unfinished Democratic Upsurges: Mapping Political Rejuvenation and Student Politics in ‘New’ India,” Contemporary Currents and New Research in Indian Politics: Looking Ahead to the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, King’s India Institute Workshop, 7 June 2018, King’s College London, London.
May 2018 “La mobilisation sur les campus enInde: la gauche face à la question des castes.” Alternative Workshops of the EHESS, 25May 2018, Paris. (co-authored with Kristina Garalytė).
May 2018  “Contemporary Student Politics in India.” Guest Lecture, 24 May 2018, School of Social Sciences, University of Minnesota, United States. (co-authored with Khaliq Parkar).
December 2017  “Mapping Contemporary Hindu Right Discourses in India: Exploratory Evidences from Prime Ministerial and Student Activist Lexical Worlds,” Special International Conference, 70 years of Independence: India in Asia, 8-9 December 2017, Seoul National University, Seoul.
November 2017 “Continuities and Legacies in Student Politicisation: the Case of India,” The Contentious Politics of Higher Education: Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism, Conference at COSMOS: The Centre on Social Movement Studies, 15-16 November 2017, Scuola Nazionale Superiore, Florence.
June 2017 “Campus as a Political Sounding Board: Exploring the Changing Language of Welfare and Warfare in Student Politics,” 6th French Network for Asian Studies International Conference (FNASIC), 26-28 June 2017, Sciences Po Paris.
June 2017 “The Campus as a Site of Politics? Literature Review and Theoretical Considerations,” 6th French Network for Asian Studies International Conference (FNASIC), 26-28June 2017, Sciences Po Paris. (co-authored with Khaliq Parkar).
June 2017  “Subculture or Culture Légitime? Niche Institutionalisation of Gender Issues in an Indian Campus.” 6th French Network for Asian Studies International Conference (FNASIC), 26-28June 2017, Sciences Po Paris.(co-authored with Caroline Michon).
June 2017 Guest Lecture. “Islam and Politics in India: An Introductory Overview,” Seoul National University Guest Lecture, 8 June, Seoul National University, South Korea.
June 2017 Panel Discussant. “Ideas of India, Past and Present,” 42nd Regular Conference of the Korean Society for Indian Studies, 10 June, Busan University of Foreign Studies (BUFS), South Korea.
April 2017 “Ascetics in a Secular Uniform? Indian Marxism and the Practice of Declassing in an Elite Campus.”British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) Annual Conference, 19-21 April 2017, University of Nottingham.
July 2016 “‘Your PhD is About Me, but you Have Lost Your Subject’: A Note on Political Defection in an Indian University.”24th European Conference on South Asian Studies (ECSAS), 27-30 July 2017, University of Warsaw, Warszawa
May 2016 “La méthode du voyageur :pratiquesethnographiques et pluralismeméthodologique dans l’étude du fait politique sur les campus indiens,” Le Terrain en Sciences Sociales: Nouvelles Pratiques et Nouvelles Limitesd’unePratiqueen Mutation, 30-31 May 2016,Université Paris VIII, France.
April 2016 “‘The Political Festival’: Electoral Party Identification in an Indian Campus,”British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) Annual Conference, 6-8April 2016, University of Cambridge (co-authored with KhaliqParkar).
March 2016 “Radically Representative: Democratic Inclusiveness and Dissent in the Central University,”Guest Lecture, 8 March 2016, Symbiosis International University, School for Liberal Arts, Pune.(co-authored with Khaliq Parkar).
June 2015 “The Broker and the Revolutionary: Initiatory Politics in an Indian Campus,”Noria Graduate Conference on South Asia, 17-19 June 2015, Centre de recherchesinternationales (CERI), Paris.
May 2015 “The Lobbyist and the Revolutionary: Initiatory Politics in an Indian Campus,” 9th European PhD workshop in South Asia Studies, 18-19 May 2015, Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET), Höllviken.
May 2015 “From Mobilisation to Demobilisation; Life and Death of Political Socialisation in an Indian Campus,” PhD seminar, 6 May 2015, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi.
March 2015 “A Three-Level Understanding of Countercultural Political Socialisation in an Indian Campus,”Research Scholars Workshop (RSW), 26-27 March 2015, Delhi School of Economics, New Delhi.
March 2015 “Women in Social Movements, the Case of Campus Politics in Delhi,”17th Workshop for Young Scholars, 9-12 March 2015, Association des Jeunes Etudes Indiennes (AJEI), Banaras Hindu University, Varansasi.
July 2014 “c: An Ethnographic Perspective on Radical Youth Activism in an Indian Campus,” 5th ECPR Graduate Student Conference, 3-5 July 2014, European Consortium for Political Research, University of Innsbruck.
September 2013 “In the Maoist Incubator: A Review of Youth Radical Activism in Indian Campuses,”1st Global Conference: Revolt and Revolution, 4-6 November 2013, Inter-Disciplinary.net, Athens.
June 2013 “Forging Political Ethoses With Hammers and Sickles; a Glimpse into JNU Left-wing Activism on Campus,” King’s India Institute Graduate Forum, 6 June 2013, King’s College London, London.

Professional Service

February 2020 Guest editor of the special issue 22 of SAMAJ titled Student Activism in South Asia (co-edited with Kristina Garalytė).
October 2019 Workshop Convenor. “From Caste Patriotism to Caste Activism: Caste Associations as Political Intermediaries in India.” Journée d’étude CSH/JNU, 3-4 October 2019, Centre de Sciences Humaines, Delhi (co-convened with Julien Levesque et Surinder Jodhka).
April 2019 Workshop Convenor. “Mediated Campaigns and Unmediated Politics in Millennial India.” CSH and IIIT-D joint workshop, 26 April 2019, Centre de Sciences Humaines, Delhi (co-convened with Aasim Khan).
November 2018 Panel Convenor. “South Asia from the lens of Student Politics.” Samaj special seminar, 8 May 2018, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and Sciences Po Paris, Paris(co-convened with Kristina Garalytė).
October 2018 Panel Convenor. “Rejuvenating politics? Student politics and the history of youth’s political selves in South Asia.” 47th Annual Conference on South Asia, University Wisconsin-Madison, Madison. (co-convened with Laurence Gautier).
2018 Academic Curator, Library of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH), New Delhi.
July 2018 Panel Convenor. “Studying Up: Power, Politics, and Practice in Elite Education.” 25th European Conference on South Asian Studies (ECSAS), 24-27 July 2018, Centre d’études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS),Paris. (co-convened with Anna Ruddock).
July 2018 Panel Convenor. “Retrieving the 1950s as a Transitional Moment in India’s Foreign and Domestic Policy.” 2018 Association for Asian Studies (AAS-in-Asia), 5-8 July 2018, Ashoka University, New Delhi. (co-convened with Raphaëlle Khan).
January 2018 Panel Convenor. “South Asia Research Workshop 2018.” Annual Workshop, Noria South Asia Programme, 24 January 2018, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris. (co-convened with Charlotte Thomas, Xavier Houdoy and Roma Casamitjana).
June 2017 Panel Convenor. “Student Politics: Movements and Mobilization in Contemporary India,” 6th French Network for Asian Studies International Conference (FNASIC), 26–28 June 2017, Sciences Po Paris.(co-convened with Khaliq Parkar).
2017-2018 Peer Reviewer for the Journal of Communication Inquiry (ICJ) and for the Irish Journal of South Asian Studies (IJSAS).
2017–2018 Admission reviewer for BA international applicants to Sciences Po Paris.
February 2016 Panel Convenor: “Erosion of democracy? Rising Illiberalisms in South Asia and Europe,” Panel Discussion, 18 February 2016, King’s College London (KII), London. (co-convened with Aasim Khan and Raphaëlle Khan).

Professional Affiliation

2013 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR)
2014 The British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS)
2015 International Political Science Association (IPSA)
2015 European Association for South Asian Studies (EASAS)
2018 Association for Asian Studies (AAS)
2018 Royal Asiatic Society (RAS)

Work in Progress

2021? In the Shadow of Saffron India: The Azadi Generation and the Politics of Becoming. Manuscript project based on my PhD dissertation.
2021? The Politics of Depression in Hopeless Times: The Case of Anti-establishment Student Activism in Contemporary India. Article in preparation (co-authored with Shreyasi Biswas and Mehak Ahmed).
2020? Aping the People: Populism as Mimesis in Narendra Modi Speeches. Article in preparation (co-authored with Christophe Jaffrelot).
2020? Student Politics: Movements and Mobilisation in Contemporary India. Orient Blackswan (edited volume co-edited with Khaliq Parkar).
2020? Altbach in India. In Student Politics: Movements and Mobilisation in Contemporary India, edited by Khaliq Parkar and Jean-Thomas Martelli. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan (co-authored with Thierry Luescher and Avarna Ojha).

Academic Training

Summer 2019 52nd Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis ⦁ Course: “Quantitative Text Analysis,” Course: “Advanced Methods for Social Media & Textual Data,” Course: “Mathematics for Social Scientists”
Summer 2019 52nd Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis ⦁ Course 1B: Quantitative Text Analysis, Course 2P: Web Scraping and Data Management.
July 2015 Summer School in Methods and Techniques, European Consortium for Political Research, University of Ljubljana ⦁ Applied Regression.
July 2013 Summer School in Methods and Techniques, European Consortium for Political Research, University of Ljubljana ⦁ Issues in Political, Policy and Organisation Ethnography& Analysing Political Discourse.
Summer 2010 Intensive Course to Research Methodology, Qualitative Focus, NVivo training ⦁ Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam.

Computer Skills

Qualitative tools Advanced knowledge of NVivo ⦁ Working knowledge of MAXQDA.
Quantitative tools Advanced knowledge of R and Stata ⦁ Basic knowledge of SPSS.
Textual analysis Advanced knowledge of Mallet (topic modelling), TXM (lexicometry) and Iramuteq (cluster & correspondence analysis)
Working knowledge of Stanford Core NLP (natural language processing)
Advanced Python programming.
Webmaster Advanced knowledge of Joomla, Hypothesis and WordPress ⦁ Basic knowledge of PHP. Designed and managed the online content of the following research websites: The Indian Subcontinent’s Shared Sacred Sites (I-Share), The Social Profile of India’s National and Provincial Elected Representatives, 1919 – 2019 (LIA SERUIC/SPINTER), Les nouveaux démagogues (LND), Démocratie autoritaire, populisme, affairisme et ethno-nationalisme.

Language Proficiency

French Native
Italian Native
English Fluent
Hindi Spoken: Intermediate
Written: Intermediate
Korean Spoken: Beginner
Written: Beginner

Referees

PhD Supervisor Professor Christophe Jaffrelot,
Senior Research Fellow, Centre national
de la recherche scientifique(CNRS),[1]
Centre de recherches internationales (CERI),[2]
Sciences Po Paris,
56 rue Jacob 75006 Paris, France,
Email: jaffrelot12@gmail.com,
Telephone: +33(0)688747495
PhD Supervisor Dr Louise Tillin,
Senior Lecturer in Politics,
Deputy Director,
King’s India Institute,
King’s College London,
Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom,
Email: louise.tillin@kcl.ac.uk,
Telephone: +44(0)2078487051
PhD Examiner Dr Andrew Wyatt, Senior Lecturer,
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies,
University of Bristol,
Senate House, Tyndall Ave, Bristol BS8 1TH, United Kingdom,
Email: A.K.J.Wyatt@bristol.ac.uk,
Telephone: +44(0)1179288477
PhD Examiner Dr Nicolas Jaoul,
Research Fellow, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS),
Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeuxsociaux (IRIS),[3]
École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS),[4]
54 Boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris, France
Email: jaoul.nicolas@gmail.com,
Telephone: +33(0)0149542352

[1]National Scientific Research Council (France)

[2]The Centre for International Studies and Research

[3]Interdisciplinary Institute of Social Issues

[4]School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences