Taran Samarth

Taran is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science and a 2023-2024 RITM graduate fellow. Their research examines how federalism shapes American social movements, especially in local politics and the carceral state. As a policy fellow, they will study public attitudes towards, and movement discourses around, the expansion of surveillance technologies and local-federal data-sharing in law enforcement. They graduated from Penn State with degrees in sociology, philosophy, mathematics, and political science in 2023.