Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Prerna Singh is Mahatma Gandhi Associate Professor in Political Science at the School of International and Public Affairs with appointments in the School of Public Health and the Department of Sociology. She has published award-winning books and articles on human development, social welfare, public health, and ethnicity and nationalism. Her first book, How Solidarity Works for Welfare (Cambridge University Press, 2016), was awarded best book prizes from both the American Political Science and the American Sociological Associations. She has been awarded fellowships by the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the Social Science Research Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the American Academy of Berlin, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), the Harvard Academy, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. She serves on the editorial boards of Cambridge University Press’s Studies in Comparative Politics and Elements in the Politics of Development series. From 2021 to 2023, she was president of the Comparative Politics section of the American Political Science Association. Her ongoing book project compares the take-up of the world’s first vaccine across China and India through the 19th and 20th centuries. Her historical analysis shows how decisions to vaccinate are “moral” decisions that are embedded in the normative and affective relationship between states and societies.