Rashmi Singh is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and a member of St. John's College at the University of Cambridge. Her research is on political recruitment and candidacy and political leadership in party politics, focusing on the contemporary Indian politics. She completed her M.Phil. from Ambedkar University in New Delhi in Gender Studies, and her dissertation was titled 'Women and the Vocation of Politics: the Gendered Nature of Electoral Competition'. Her research work brings together concerns of contemporary academic work on gender politics with political ethnography and questions of power and access in party politics. Previous to this, Rashmi has worked extensively on research projects related to different aspects of urban politics, including urban informal economy and labour affairs and urban political activism.