Rate My Professor Felix Pal

Felix Pal is a Lecturer in Political Science and International Relations in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia. He earned his PhD in Politics from the Australian National University in 2022, along with a Bachelor of Asia Pacific Studies (Honours) from the same university and a BA in Islamic Studies from the University of Melbourne. Prior to his appointment at UWA, Pal was a PhD candidate in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. He held a Fox International Fellowship at Yale University for the 2019-2020 academic year, conducting research titled "Saffron Salaams: When Muslims Become Hindu Nationalists." Previously, he worked as a program coordinator in refugee resettlement projects.

Pal's academic interests lie in Qualitative Political Science, South Asian Studies, Covert Networks, and Far-Right Studies. His research examines far-right organisational network strategies, transnational far-right organising with a focus on South Asia, ethnic and religious nationalism, Islamic studies, and South Asian politics. He explores relationships between Hindu nationalist far-right groups and Indian Muslim communities, including the Muslim Rashtriya Manch as the Muslim wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Key publications include "Organizational Diffusion: What India Tells Us about How the Far Right Wins" (Politics and Society, 2025), "Taking Ideology Out: Finding the Diasporic Hindu Far-Right Down Under" with N. Thapliyal and G. Gandbhir (Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2025), "Similarity Heuristics in the Indian Far Right: How the RSS Obscures Its Operational Scale" (Journal of Right-Wing Studies, 2024), "Far-right reflexology: a periphery-to-centre approach for the study of the far-right" (Politics, Religion and Ideology, 2023), "Leaving the Hindu Far Right" with N. Chaudhary (2023), "The Shape of the Sangh: Rethinking Hindu Nationalist Organisational Ties" (2022), "Ram Was a Prophet Too: Syncretism as a Hindu Nationalist Political Strategy" (2022), and his PhD thesis "Weaponised Pluralism: Why Hindu Nationalists Need Muslim Friends" (2021). At UWA, Pal teaches Foundations of Comparative Politics, Understanding Politics and Policy, and Policy and Diplomacy in Practice. He engages in academic-activist partnerships addressing far-right mobilisations in the Indian Ocean region and is affiliated with the Centre for Muslim States and Societies.