#  Ritika Goel 

Stone Program Postdoctoral Fellow

 

 

 



   ![Ritika Goel](/sites/g/files/omnuum5566/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2025-09/Ritika%20Goel.jpg?itok=koqeUaeo) 

 



 

 laptop\_windows [Website](https://sites.google.com/view/ritikagoel/bio) 

 

 



 

Ritika Goel is a recent doctoral graduate in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research explores status aspirations among minority and poor individuals, and how right-wing populists capture narratives and shape perceptions of performance in office by leveraging these status aspirations, information asymmetries and challenging liberal democratic institutions in multi-ethnic and unequal democracies.

Drawing on rich multi-method fieldwork across India, the United States, and Brazil, Ritika’s book project combines interviews, electoral data, campaign speech analysis, and survey experiments to investigate why new poor and minority voters support economically right-of-center, culturally conservative populist leaders in power in deeply unequal societies and what these leaders claim to have done in office. She not only investigates the appeal of such right-wing populism in power for aspirational minorities, but also how the strategies and democratic trajectories of such populism diverge depending on vulnerable media business models and other institutional and structural constraints. Ritika’s broader research interests include business and regulation, upward mobility, information environments, inequality, and infrastructure policy constraints in India and United States. She holds a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University and a Bachelor’s in Engineering from Delhi University, and has worked in international development with the World Bank Group and the UK Department for International Development. As a Stone Postdoctoral Fellow, Ritika looks forward to working on her research and book manuscript and benefiting from the vibrant, interdisciplinary community.



 

 

 





 

 

- ## Roles
    
     [Postdoctoral Fellows](/roles/postdoctoral-fellows)