Tia Mittle ‘26

Tia Mittle is from Mumbai, India and is working with Professor Susan Ostermann on a variety of projects relating to democracy and development. One of their projects involves investigating the colonial legacies of Hale’s doctrine in India and the US. Hale inspired a series of laws consistent with the principle that women were chattel and had no agency of their own, many of which remain on the books today. Mittle is assisting Ostermann in editing the BTI report for Nepal and drafting the 2025 Freedom House Report for Nepal. In Spring ‘24, Mittle and Ostermann wrote and presented a paper at a conference hosted by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The paper focused on how the India-China cybersecurity battles came to be an electoral non-issue in the Indian general elections that concluded in June 2024. Mittle is also working with Ostermann and her team on a National Science Foundation project understanding hazard-resilient housing in Hawaii; the project engages with building code compliance and the impact of disasters on Puerto Rico and Alaska as well. For these projects, Mittle is conducting literature reviews, integrating data from a variety of sources for an analytical report and contributing to ongoing democracy research.

Mittle leads weekly philosophical dialogue as a God and the Good Life Fellow, serves as the Co-President of FeministND, a club that strives to empower women on campus, and as the Secretary of the South Asian Student Association. Mittle spent her Spring ‘24 semester in Washington, D.C. interning for the government relations team at the National Endowment for Democracy. She also spent her summer in D.C. working with the Policy & Impact team at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO), and is continuing her work as a Poverty Research Fellow at LEO. Mittle is also a Diplomacy Scholar at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. Through the program, she visited NATO headquarters, the EEA and other significant diplomatic institutions in the Netherlands and Belgium. Mittle is dedicated to promoting women’s rights, democracy, and development with a focus on South Asia, connecting her research back to her home.