Shasta Kaul is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and a Research Associate at the Center for Civics, Culture and Society at Miami University. Through three case studies, her dissertation, What is Real in Political Realism? An Exploration of Authority in the work of Arendt, Machiavelli, and Kautilya, argues that realists from very different times and places understand that epistemic issues strongly influence how authority can be wielded sustainably in any given regime. She is also interested in understanding what it means to be a citizen, and how the idea of citizenship has changed over time.

Shasta was born in India and raised in Singapore. She received a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford in 2018, and an M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2019.

You can get in touch with Shasta at skaul2@nd.edu or at kauls@miamioh.edu.