Sobia Paracha
Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science Department
Graduate Research Associate, South Asia Center
Bio
Sobia is a Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science Department and a graduate research associate with the South Asia Center at the Moynihan Institute. Her research interests center on the evolution of elite narratives, the domestic drivers of territorial sovereignty, and the strategic framing of national identity within South Asia. Her dissertation specifically investigates how narratives surrounding territorial disputes in Pakistan shift alongside internal political dynamics, exploring how domestic survival strategies dictate international posturing.
Methodologically, she adopts an approach that integrates a qualitative sensibility for data generation with advanced computational tools. While her work is deeply informed by extensive archival research conducted in Pakistan, she primarily works with text as data and utilizes large language models to analyze political discourse. This dual expertise allows her to bridge the gap between historical context and modern data science.
Her scholarship is grounded by her professional background, including previous roles with the Government of Pakistan, Sandia National Laboratories and the New America Foundation. Fluent in Hindi, Urdu and English, she brings a nuanced regional perspective to both her research and her teaching. At the Maxwell School, she has taught courses in international relations and currently leads the labs for the Maxwell quantitative methods sequence, where she trains students in the application of statistical and data analysis.
Research Interests
Nuclear Weapons, South Asia, International Borders and Conflict