Assistant Professor of Political Science
Areas of Specialization: International Security; Civil Wars; Gender and Conflict; War and Social Transformation; South Asian Security, Qualitative Methods
Apekshya Prasai is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston University. Her research examines the relationship between gender, conflict and social transformation, with a regional focus on South Asia, especially Nepal.
Her book project examines the gendered ways in which insurgents organize violence and explains why some rebels conform to patriarchal norms while others radically subvert them. Presenting a novel theory of militant female activism, her work highlights the critical but neglected role women play in shaping the gender strategies rebels adopt. Her book and other related projects draw on extensive data collected through ethnographic fieldwork in Nepal and archival research in the Netherlands and across several digital archives. Combining semi-structured interviews, oral histories and rare primary documents in Nepali, Hindi and English, her research sheds lights on the social, especially, gendered processes of civil wars.
Her research has been recognized and supported by several awards and fellowships including the Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association’s Women, Gender and Politics Section; the Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar Award; predoctoral fellowship in the International Security Program at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; the United States Institute of Peace Dissertation Award and the American Political Science Association Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant.
Prasai received her PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2024 and B.A. in Government and Legal Studies from Bowdoin College in 2016. Prior to joining Boston University, Prasai was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.