Vignesh is a Political Science and Public Policy PhD holder from the King’s India Institute, King’s College London. In his doctoral thesis, he explored the role of regional political parties in converting socio-cultural movements into sustainable party politics in the Indian Ocean region. His research spans multiple disciplines, including political science, public policy, sociology, and business studies. He has over 5 years of professional experience in public policy, legislative research, and political consulting.
He has provided consultancy for India’s principal national opposition party for multiple provincial elections between 2015 and 2018. In the 2019 General Elections he worked on the party’s election manifesto and the largest universal income support scheme which is now being implemented at the provincial level in a few states. Subsequently, he crafted election strategy and state development plans for two regional parties across three states in the 2021 and 2022 provincial elections in India.
He is a research affiliate at the King’s India Institute, where he co-leads the Social Media Networks and (Dis)information in Global South research group. He is also a postdoctoral affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include public policy, politics of mobilisation, democratic development, the interplay between domestic politics and foreign policy, and the dynamics of social media.
At KITLV, Vignesh will be working alongside the PI Professor Ward Berenschot on the ‘Costs of democracy: The political economy of campaign finance’ project, to study the campaign finance practices in India and Indonesia.
Selected Publications
Vignesh Karthik K.R., ‘Vijayakanth’s political journey was a blend of aspiration, courage, mistakes and harsh realities’, The Wire, 2024.
Vignesh Karthik K.R. & Raghunath Nageswaran, ‘Policy and practice of social justice in Tamil Nadu’, [review essay] retrieved from Economic & Political Weekly, 2023.
Vignesh Karthik K.R. & Vishal Vasanthakumar, ‘Caste, then class: Redistribution and representation in the Dravidian model’, CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, Vol. 3 No. 1, 2022.
Vignesh Karthik K.R. & Pulari Meera Baskar, ‘The caravan: Towards equal terms’, The Caravan Magazine, 2021.
Vignesh Karthik K.R. & M. Vijayabaskar, ‘A crucible of Tamil Nadu’s sociopolitical ethos’, Economic and Political Weekly, 2021.
Vignesh Karthik K.R., Vihang Jumle & Jeyannathann Karunanithi, BJP’s Twitter experiments and Tamil resilience’, Economic and Political Weekly, 2020.
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