Louise Tillin

Introduction

Professor Louise Tillin is Professor of Politics, King’s India Institute, King’s College London. Her research interests span federalism, democracy and territorial politics in India, and the history and politics of social policy design and implementation. Her books include Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins (Hurst & Co/Oxford University Press, 2013); Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across Indian States, edited with Rajeshwari Deshpande and K K Kailash (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2015); Indian Federalism (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2019); and The Politics of Poverty Reduction in India: The UPA Government, 2004 to 2014 (with James Chiriyankandath, Diego Maiorano and James Manor) (New Delhi, Orient Blackswan, 2020). Her latest book, Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

Since 2011, Professor Tillin has led research projects on subnational comparative politics and social policy in India (British Academy International Partnership, with Lokniti/CSDS); on explaining electoral change in urban and rural India (Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); on India’s political economy (United Kingdom [UK]-India Education and Research Initiative Trilateral Partnership with UC Berkeley and Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research); and on electoral perceptions around health in India (British Academy). Between 2013 and 2017, she was part of a multi-country research programme on the politics of reducing poverty and inequality across Brazil, China, India and South Africa supported by the ESRC. Professor Tillin held a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (2018-19) for a project on welfare and capitalism in India: a political history.

Professor Tillin is a former BBC South Asia analyst, and a regular commentator in international media. She is former managing editor of the journal, Regional and Federal Studies, and sits on the editorial advisory boards of Indian Law Review and Pacific Affairs.

Areas of Interest and Expertise

• Federalism, Democracy and Territorial Politics in India, and in Comparative Perspective
• History and Politics of Indian Social Policy
• Political Economy of Development in India
• Subnational Comparative Politics