Gurharpal Singh is a Professor of Politics and Diaspora Studies in the King’s India Institute.

His latest book Sikh Nationalism: From a Dominant Community to an Ethno-Religious Diaspora (with G. Shani) is published by Cambridge University Press (2022). He is currently researching two projects. The rise and decline of Leicester as a multicultural city as part of the ESRC/ORA funded international programme on diaspora politics and the mainstreaming of national populism. Secondly, he is working on a long-term project supported by the Leverhulme Trust on the partition of India and the Sikhs.

Gurharpal was educated at the LSE where he completed his BSc Economics (Government and History) and PhD (Department of Government). He has held the C.R. Parekh Chair in Indian politics at the University of Hull and the Nadir Dinshaw Chair in Inter-religious Relations at the University of Birmingham and was the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Soas, University of London. In 2020, he was awarded the Emeritus Professor in Sikh and Punjab Studies at Soas.Gurharpal was one of the founding editors of the International Journal of Punjab Studies (Sage) and is an editor of Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory (Routledge).

Research

• Multiculturalism, diasporas and urban superdiversity
• Indian diasporas
• Indian politics
• Sikh and Punjab Studies
• Religions and development

Gurharpal’s main research interest is the politics of India. He has published widely on Punjab politics, the partition of India, religious and ethnic conflict in South Asia, political corruption, and the Indian diaspora with special reference to the Sikhs. More recently, his focus has been on how social diversity in the UK produced by migration from South Asia interacts with the politics of diasporas and homelands. He is currently engaged in examining a detailed case-study of Leicester, where he has lived since 1964, and its rise and fall as a model of civic multiculturalism.

From 2006 to 2011, Gurharpal was the Deputy Director of the Department for International Development (UK) Religions and Development Programme at the University of Birmingham. This was a major international programme with partners in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Tanzania.

PhD supervision

Currently not accepting PhD applications.

Expertise and public engagement activities

Regular media coverage of South Asian politics, the Indian diasporas, multiculturalism in the UK, Sikhs in India and the diaspora

Legal expert witness: Sikhs, Sikhism and the Sikh diaspora, political corruption in India, asylum, and refugee cases

Official expert advice: Government of the UK, Republic of Ireland, Canada, the EU and the UN

Further details

See Gurharpal's research profile