Sushant Kumar

Sushant is a PhD Candidate in Public Policy, focusing on health policy. He is broadly interested in the politics of global health, reproductive health, and problem construction. He takes a long historical approach to studying current policy problems as a product of historical discursive contestation between competing ideas. His doctoral research concerns the politics of population control policies in the Indian and global context. He uses a constructivist approach in his research to understand how ideas come to be, the role science plays in legitimizing policy ideas, and how scientific evidence itself is socio-politically situated. He deploys theoretical frameworks from policy studies and political communication such as framing theory, problem definition, and agenda setting to understand discursive contestations and formation of the dominant ideas. He is conducting historical archival analysis across the U.S and India, semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, and quantitative content analysis of media narrative to answer his dissertation questions.