Dr Amogh Sharma

Amogh’s research interests focus on the nature of democratic politics in the Global South, with special emphasis on party politics, political communication, and the political economy of development in South Asia. In 2020, he completed his D.Phil. in International Development at ODID where his thesis examined the ‘professionalisation of politics’ in India as witnessed by the growing influence of specialized party staffers, political consultants, ‘spin-doctors’, and pollsters in the domain of election campaigns and intra-party politics.

As an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, he will build upon his existing research by examining the interface between technology and politics in contemporary India. During the course of the fellowship, Amogh will be exploring how the problem of disinformation and conspiratorial propaganda can be better understood by analysing the actors and institutions that produce them. He is also keen to collaborate with knowledge exchange partners to see how the findings from his research can be used to inform policy solutions on the regulation and monitoring of election campaigns and political parties.

In the past, he has worked as a Departmental Lecturer in Modern South Asian Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies where he taught graduate level courses on ‘Economic Development in South Asia: 1947 to Present’, ‘Core Course in Modern South Asia Studies’, Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods, and supervised various MSc dissertations. At the undergraduate level, he has held a Lectureship in Politics at The Queen’s College, Oxford, where he taught ‘Introduction to Politics’ and ‘Comparative Government’ to PPE students.