Abhit Bhandari
Assistant Professor
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. I specialize in comparative politics and the political economy of development. My primary strand of research investigates how political inequalities shape economic exchange, business, and formal and informal institutions, with a regional focus in sub-Saharan Africa. I have conducted fieldwork in Senegal, Niger, Mozambique, and The Gambia, and have implemented large-scale field experiments, original surveys and survey experiments, qualitative interviews, and fine-grained observational data collection. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).