When Tauhid Sayeed Bin Kashem left Bangladesh for his undergraduate pursuits at Amherst College, he had intended to study economics. But his growing curiosity and fascination with differences between global political institutions soon steered him to political science. He pursued the topic further through a master’s at Johns Hopkins before being accepted to UCI’s top-ranked Ph.D. program in political science. This year, he was awarded a Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar Fellowship to support completion of his dissertation which will shed light on what happens to an increasingly large number of refugees when they seek shelter in other countries. Below, Bin Kashem shares his groundbreaking research, the diverse experiences that have shaped his scholarly pursuits, and why UCI has been the perfect place for him to pursue his passion.

Share with us your educational pathway and why you chose UCI for your Ph.D. What interests you most about your work?

I went to Amherst College for my undergraduate degree. At the time, I was an economics major. I had just arrived from Bangladesh, and knew almost nothing about political science. But by my second year, I was obsessed and was taking as many political science courses as I could. I decided to continue my exploration of political science at Johns Hopkins University and received a master's degree there.

I have always been fascinated with how political institutions in the Global South adapt and change. The received wisdom in my field has been that in countries of the Global South, individual leaders make decisions authoritatively, and political institutions are generally weak and ineffective. My own experience in the Global South challenges that notion. When I first came to UCI, I was initially interested in understanding how military institutions in South and Southeast Asia had adapted after their role as coup-makers ended in the mid-1990s. But in 2017, when a genocide in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State forced more than a million Rohingya refugees to flee to neighboring countries, I became increasingly intrigued by what happens to refugees after they flee. I noticed that countries that had adapted their institutions in certain ways tended to shelter refugees, whereas countries with different institutional arrangements tended to deter refugees from coming even when public opinion may have been favorable towards refugees. I test this explanation in my dissertation. In the last couple of years, conflict in countries like Venezuela, Ukraine, and Sudan has effectively multiplied the global refugee population three times. My Ph.D. project is a step towards understanding what happens to this increasingly large number of refugees when they seek shelter in other countries.

Tell us about your research that’s being funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar Fellowship. What problem will your findings help solve? Will you be travelling to pursue your work and if so, where?

As fieldwork for my dissertation, over the past year, I traveled to four countries--Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand-- and interviewed 245 individuals. 124 of these interviews were open-ended, one-on-one, interviews with government, United Nations, and NGO officials, as well as with refugee lawyers and journalists. I also interviewed 121 Rohingya refugees in these four countries spread across eight cities, border towns, and villages. You can imagine the huge amount of audio recordings and notes these interviews have collectively produced. The Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar Fellowship will be supporting me this year to transcribe my audio recordings into text, and to complete writing my Ph.D. dissertation. I hope this work will help me shed light on how the kind of institutional adaptations certain countries undergo lead, sometimes unexpectedly, to refugee protection. The absence of this protection in host countries can lead to refugee deaths that often rival the violence that refugees were trying to flee in their countries of origin. The other interesting thing my fieldwork led me to understand is how malleable international organizations like the United Nations are by weaker states of the Global South. People often think that the policies of UN agencies are mainly shaped at global meetings in Geneva or New York, and usually by more powerful countries. What I found, however, is that when UN agencies do their work in weaker states, they often have to change their operating procedures in ways that can be significantly different from the policies made at the headquarters level.

Who have been your faculty mentors while here, and what impact have they had on your graduate career?

I am very much indebted for my academic accomplishments thus far to the guidance and mentorship of the faculty within my department. There are way too many of them to mention here-- some have inspired me, some have introduced me to new theoretical lenses, and others have helped me bring academic rigor to my Ph.D. project. But Kamal Sadiq, my advisor, has undoubtedly had the biggest impact in shaping who I am as a scholar today. He helped me to see that what are often deemed marginal issues in world politics are in fact connected in surprising and intricate ways with the larger questions that animate my field. He has encouraged me to persist with my research question and has helped me to identify resources and opportunities that have allowed me to succeed as a researcher. As a scholar steeped in the study of the Global South, he has shown me that my diverse experiences are a source of fresh insights into the questions and conversations of my discipline.

When do you plan to complete your Ph.D.? What are your plans thereafter? How has UCI prepared you well for this role?

I plan to complete my Ph.D. by the end of the 2023-2024 academic year. I'm passionate about research and teaching. and I want to be a professor and continue to do both after I graduate from UCI. UCI has prepared me to do both. I designed and taught my first class at UCI this summer in addition to working as a TA in past years. UCI is a unique place to learn to teach-- it is a premier public university, as well as a minority-serving institution. The students are both intellectually brilliant and come from diverse backgrounds. I have learned to lean on this diversity in my teaching, and have found that the conversations I have with my students in and out of class frequently transform the way we see the world. It's thrilling!

Any unique life experiences that have guided your educational journey? Give us some background.

I grew up in Bangladesh, a small developing country in South Asia, and Brunei, a small but exceedingly rich country in Southeast Asia. I then came to rural western Massachusetts, that is, a small town in one of the most influential countries in the world to pursue my undergraduate education. Each of these countries has a different political system, different norms, and different ways in which they've tried to make their mark on the world stage. As a scholar of global politics, this lived experience of variation has undoubtedly shaped the way I approach research questions. In my research, for instance, I'm drawn to a comparative approach-- that is, I'm fascinated by the question of why countries that may on the surface seem similar sometimes produce vastly different political outcomes. There are so many different ways in which people living around the world have sought to solve life's questions, and we as scholars have only scratched the surface of the possibilities.

Any other tidbits you’d like to share?

One of the non-academic advantages of traveling through South and Southeast Asia for my fieldwork last year has been that I've gotten to taste an incredible number of dishes, many of which I had never even heard of before. While Southern California is a very diverse place, it is still difficult to find restaurants that serve these dishes here. My attempt to recreate some of these dishes at home has led me to the narrow, overflowing aisles of Asian grocery stores run by minority migrant communities that I did not think lived in Southern California. In the coming months, I want to familiarize myself more with these migrant communities, and hopefully, become a better cook.