Shenali Pilapitiya

Shenali Pilapitiya is a PhD candidate in Political Science specializing in Comparative Politics and Methods. Her work focuses on contentious politics, social movements, political culture, and political theory. She is currently working on the relationship between social movements and state capacity in South Asia.

Shenali draws from her interdisciplinary background in area studies, sociology and anthropology and is interested in interpretive and qualitative methods. 

Prior to her PhD, Shenali worked as a teaching assistant in the Sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley, and as an educator with the Bay Area Education Team. She holds a MSc. in South Asia Studies from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.