“Shifting Geographies of Expertise and Policymaking in China and India” International Research Seminar Fellowship

This international research seminar addresses the changing relationships between expertise and policymaking in India, China, and beyond. In both countries, an increasing reliance on technical expertise for governance has been juxtaposed alongside new conceptions of who counts as a relevant expert. The response to the COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps the most vivid of many instances that illuminates the formation of novel epistemic communities and new institutional frameworks and infrastructures for knowledge production for policymaking. This seminar will explore the contested relationships and the shifting contracts between epistemic and political authority at local, national, regional, and global scales.