I am a Ph.D. candidate, ABD in political science at the University of Rochester and expect to receive my degree in May 2010. I am also an Instructor at the College Writing Program of the University of Rochester. My main field of research is comparative politics with a regional focus on South Asia. My doctoral dissertation examines the relationship between democratic transitions and ethnic conflict in the empirical context of the Second Wave of democratization: transitions from colonial rule post- WW II. I test my theoretical predictions using an original dataset on the "colonial legacies" of 124 minority ethnic groups in ex-British colonies as well as case-study evidence from India.