Biography

Tejas Parasher is Assistant Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science and at the UCLA International Institute. He is the author of Radical Democracy in Modern Indian Political Thought (Cambridge 2023), the first study of an intellectual tradition of participatory democracy in South Asia. His research interests lie in the relationship between empire, democracy, and constitutionalism within modern political and legal thought, as well as in the subfield of comparative political theory. His current research explores federalist political thought in interwar South Asia.

Prior to joining UCLA, Professor Parasher was Junior Research Fellow in Political Thought and Intellectual History at King’s College, University of Cambridge.

Education

• PhD (Political Science), University of Chicago (2019)
• B.A. Hons (Political Science), University of Toronto (2013)

Selected Publications

• “M.N. Roy and the Problem of Parliamentary Democracy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 85.3 (July 2024): 601-26.
• Radical Democracy in Modern Indian Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
• “Beyond Parliament: Gandhian Democracy and Postcolonial Founding,” Political Theory 50.6 (2022): 837-60.
• “Federalism, Representation, and Direct Democracy in 1920s India,” Modern Intellectual History 19.2 (2022): 444-72.
• “Inequality and Tumulti in Machiavelli’s Aristocratic Republics,” Polity 49.1 (2017): 42-68.

Honors & Awards

2024 American Political Science Association (APSA) Foundations of Political Theory First Book Award

2020 APSA Leo Strauss Award for Best Dissertation in Political Philosophy

2015 Joseph Cropsey Prize in Political Philosophy – University of Chicago

Courses & Presentations

PS 218: Comparative Political Theory
PS 113A: Problems in 20^th Century Political Theory
GS 191: Empire and International Thought
GS 1: Introduction to Globalization
GS 160: Global Justice