Shinali is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Calcutta. She completed her M.Sc. in Economics from the University of Calcutta and her B.Sc. from Loreto College, Kolkata. Her primary fields of research interests are political economy, development economics, public economics and economics of institutions. She is also interested in questions of identity formation and the role played by culture and norms in shaping the economic life of women. Her doctoral thesis analyses how the provision of public goods, both generic and group-specific, as well as conflict under weak institutional settings, function as rational electoral strategies. Outside academia, Shinali is passionate about literature and films, and she enjoys writing. She is also a trained Bharatanatyam dancer.