Siddhi Wadekar


Faculty Advisor: Aakansha Natani
Research Areas: Data Diplomacy; Cross Border Data Flows; Localisation and Sovereignty in the Geopolitical Context; Data Policy Frameworks in Global South with Focus on India; Political Theory of the Digital Age
Email: siddhi.wadekar@research.iiit.ac.in
🔗 scholar.google.com, orcid.org, linkedin.com

I completed my bachelor’s degree in Economics from Fergusson College, Pune and completed my master’s degree in Political science from University of Hyderabad. I submitted a Master’s thesis titled “Situating the notion of Public in Neoliberalism: An Analysis of the Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis” where I attempted to go beyond the predominantly structural economic analysis and bring out the political and social crisis that subsequently unfolded in Greece post the 2008 financial crisis. Subsequently, I co-authored a paper that has been published in the EPW which probes into the pre-theoretical consciousness as examined through a comparative analysis of Gramsci’s ‘common sense’, Charles Taylor’s “social imaginary’ and Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’ and applying them to Indian case studies. Before joining PhD, I worked at the Human Sciences Research Centre (HSRC) as a research assistant under Dr Aakansha Natani on the Data Diplomacy Project which culminated into a co-authored paper currently under review with SAGE. At, IIIT-H, I am currently expanding my research on data diplomacy and allied areas. I enjoy reading political theory and philosophy and applying it to make sense of the digital world around.

Current Research

Research Statement: I am currently exploring data diplomacy as an emerging domain in foreign policy and the use of data as a tool for diplomatic negotiations and securing national interests. I am looking at various approaches in the global data governance paradigms, such as the free data flow approach and the data sovereignty approach and trying to analyse the unique strategies that the developed and developing countries are adopting at the national and international level. An important part of my research is to look at India as a leading global south data economy and its role as a rising player, a strategic partner of the developed world and as a developing economy having shared concerns with other global south countries and make sense of India’s evolving strategic position.

Publications

  • Krishnendu, G., Wadekar, S., Majumdar, S., & Patnaik, A. K. (2021, June 26). Common Sense, Habitus, and Social Imaginary Case Studies from India. Economic and Political Weekly Vol LVI NOS 26 & 27, pp. 84-91.