Vidhu Mukundan

Vidhu Priya Mukundan (sahe/her) is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science. Vidhu’s research explores political intermediaries and women’s leadership in urban politics at the hyper-local level. Specifically, Vidhu’s research explores alternative pathways to women’s participation in politics in a setting where political parties are dominated by men. To learn more about Vidhu’s research and publications, visit her webpage.

In Spring 2026, Vidhu was awarded a summer mini-grant to support her travel to the European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG) that will be held in June, in Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom. Vidhu will be presenting her working paper entitled: “Contesting Leadership and Legitimacy at the Grassroots: Women’s Self-Help Groups and Political Intermediaries in Urban India” at the conference. Vidhu’s research seeks to highlight how women mobilize in response to social and structural barriers to access the state and how effective such mobilizations can be. Vidhu believes understanding these new pathways to women’s engagement with democratic processes can reframe our understanding of what political participation itself entails.