I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Purdue University. In 2023-24, I will be a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University's Institute for Rebooting Social Media in the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor of Global Politics at Humboldt State University and Andrew Mellon Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies doctoral fellow.


I broadly research private actors in global governance. My work has been published in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and International Studies Review, among other outlets. My book, Hybrid Sovereignty in World Politics (Cambridge Studies in International Relations, 2022), explores how sovereign power is expressed through nonstate actors such as security contractors, business associations, and NGOs. My current project explores the global politics of Big Tech. I also theorize relational approaches like constructivism and new kinds of responsibility.


I lead an undergraduate research lab at Purdue on International Politics and Responsible Tech (iPART). Our current project builds an original dataset of Facebook's sociopolitical harms and tracks related regulatory activities worldwide. This research has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and several internal grants at Purdue.


I have won numerous teaching awards, including the highest recognition for assistant professors at Purdue.


I received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University, where I was also affiliated as a graduate fellow in the Center for Legal Studies and the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. I am trained in comparative historical, archival, and interpretive methods.


My research and travel have been generously funded by: the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Andrew Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS); The Office of the Provost, Purdue Research Foundation, College of Liberal Arts, and Department of Political Science at Purdue University; the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the Department of Political Science, Legal Studies Graduate Program, and Critical Theory Graduate Cluster, all at Northwestern University; as well as the International Studies Association, International Studies Association-Northeast, and British International Studies Association.







Swati Srivastava