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Laura Dudley Jenkins
Associate Professor, Undergraduate Director
1115 Crosley Tower
513-556-3308
laura.jenkins@uc.edu
Education
PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998.
Professional Summary
Laura Dudley Jenkins (PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati, where she is also a faculty affiliate with the Asian Studies Program and Women's Studies Department. Her research focuses on social justice in the context of culturally diverse democracies, especially India and the United States. Her book on affirmative action, Identity and Identification in India: Defining the Disadvantaged, examines the politics behind government categories based on caste, class, religion, and gender. She has published articles on law and religious conversion; competing minorities’ claims for affirmative action benefits; colonial and contemporary government ethnographies; the relationship between anti-discrimination law and census data on race and caste; and reserved legislative seats for women. Her book chapters include her research on religious family law systems; mass religious conversion as a route to social mobility, and comparative affirmative action. As a 2007-8 Fulbright New Century Scholar, she carried out research in India and South Africa on access and equity in higher education. She has received a variety of other research grants, including fellowships from the Fulbright Hays program, the Dartmouth Humanities Center, and the United States Institute of Peace. She is the Undergraduate Program Director for the department, which offers political science and international affairs majors as well as certificates in security studies and international human rights. Her online teaching case, “Shah Bano: Muslim Women’s Rights” is available online through Teaching Human Rights Online (THRO). Her undergraduate and graduate courses include South Asian politics, women and politics in the third world, nationalism and identity politics, comparative politics of developing countries, politics of South Asia, introduction to comparative government, and education and power. She has served as the Chair of Charles Phelps Taft Research Center Conferences and Lectures Committee as well as a member of numerous committees for her department, college, university and the Ohio Board of Regents.
