Amita Shastri

Professor

Contact Info:
Office: HSS 134
Office Hours: W 2:30-3:30pm and 7-8pm
Phone: (415) 338-2139
Email: ashastri@sfsu.edu
Website: http://online.sfsu.edu/ashastri

Amita Shastri is Professor of the Department of Political Science. She is a comparativist  with research and teaching interests in democracy and democratization, ethnicity and nationalism, and political economy of development; especially with reference to South Asia and Sri Lanka . She earned her doctorate in Politics (International Studies) from Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi (1985). She was awarded the Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1990-91; and has been Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar at California Institute of Technology, University of California at Los Angeles , and University of California at Berkeley . She was a Visiting Fellow at the International Center for Ethnic Studies, Colombo ( Sri Lanka ) in 1991 and 1998, and held the University Grants Commission Research Fellowship in India , 1977-1981.

She has edited The Post-Colonial States of South Asia : Democracy, Identity, Development and Security, with A. Jeyaratnam Wilson (Curzon, 2001) and is the author of numerous research articles and book chapters. Recent articles include "Ending Ethnic Civil War: The Peace Process in Sri Lanka," Commonwealth and Comparative Politics (2009); "Channelling Ethnicity: Impact of Electoral Reform in Sri Lanka," Commonwealth and Comparative Politics (2005); "The Economy in Conditions of Intense Civil War: Sri Lanka 1994-2000," in Economy, Culture, and Civil War in Sri Lanka , edited by D. Winslow and M. Woost (Indiana University Press, 2004); and "Reproducing Hegemony: The United National Party of Sri Lanka," in Political Parties in South Asia , edited by S. K. Mitra et al (Praeger, 2004).